Oral Answers to Questions

SCOTLAND

The Secretary of State was asked—

G8 Summit

Daniel Kawczynski: What assessment he has made of the economic impact of the G8 summit on Scotland.

Alistair Darling: It is too early to say at this stage, but Scotland has benefited from various international events in the past.

Daniel Kawczynski: I should like to thank the Secretary of State for that answer, but, according to the First Minister, the conference will net Scotland about £500 million. If that is correct, will he give us a public explanation of how that figure was reached? If towns such as Shrewsbury wish to host international events in future, we should find out whether, in view of all the trouble created and the need for the police, it would be worth our while making that money available for such tourism.

Alistair Darling: I was wondering when Shrewsbury was going to come into all this. The hon. Gentleman would, I think, accept two points. First, when this country holds international events, it is right that they are held in other parts of the UK as well as in London. That has happened under successive Governments and I believe that it is a good thing. Secondly, and more importantly, we acknowledge that world leaders have a unique opportunity this week to show a commitment to making poverty history and to dealing with a big issue such as climate change. Nothing that happens on the periphery should detract attention from those big issues. I, for one, am very pleased that Scotland is playing host to the G8 conference.

Mark Lazarowicz: Like my right hon. Friend, I welcome the conference and the benefits that it will bring to Scotland. Undoubtedly, though, the short-term benefits are a little more mixed, to put it mildly. Given the undoubted extra policing and security costs that will fall on local authorities and police authorities in Edinburgh and elsewhere, will the Secretary of State confirm the details of the financial assistance given by the Treasury to the Scottish Executive? Does he agree that it is important for some of that assistance to be passed on to the local and police authorities to help meet the extra costs of policing and the security measures?

Alistair Darling: There have been extensive discussions between the Government and the Scottish Executive. My hon. Friend is right that the Government have made available to the Scottish Executive £20 million as a contribution towards the policing costs of the G8 summit. It is worth remarking that, on Saturday, more than 225,000 people walked through the streets of Edinburgh with virtually no trouble whatever. That sent a very powerful message to the whole world that people from all parts of the UK and beyond want to see action at this week's G8. It is regrettable that yesterday and to some extent today a handful of people have been more concerned about themselves than about the big cause itself. I hope that most people will concentrate on Saturday's success, for which a lot of credit goes to the police and all the organisers. I hope that people will also regard yesterday's events for what they are—a needless distraction.

Pete Wishart: I join the Secretary of State in commending the fantastic rally that we saw on Saturday and in contrasting it with the appalling scenes that we witnessed in Edinburgh yesterday. Perthshire is now bracing itself for the arrival of these anarchist factions and it will want to know what the Secretary of State intends to do to ensure that the problem will be dealt with.
	Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the only way to create a real economic impact from the G8 is to leave a permanent legacy or a resource in Perthshire to continue to develop the work on and ensure compliance with anything agreed at the G8 summit? Will he join me in lobbying the Prime Minister to ensure that we secure such a legacy and resource?

Alistair Darling: I saw the hon. Gentleman's press release, which seemed to concentrate more on himself and on Perthshire than anything else. I suppose that is what the hon. Gentleman does. There are two issues to consider. First, over the coming week, there is absolutely no place in Scotland for the completely needless violence that we saw yesterday and earlier today in some places. Instead, people should concentrate on the big issues of putting poverty behind us, dealing with climate change and solving Africa's problems. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that those are the big issues. Secondly, I believe Scotland will benefit from this summit and other international events, but the most important thing is not what we do for Scotland, but what Scotland and Britain can do for the rest of the world. That is the big message that we should concentrate on.

Rosemary McKenna: But does my right hon. Friend agree that, while what Scotland is doing for the rest of the world is crucial, it is nevertheless important to recognise that it is appropriate for Scotland to host the event as it provides an opportunity to showcase our beautiful country as a place in which to live, to work and to do business? Will he decry those people who are trying to undermine the event for very dubious political capital?

Alistair Darling: I agree. Any event like the G8 summit must be a very good advertisement for Scotland, and the same is true for any international event whether it be political or cultural. It is encouraging that the number of people visiting Scotland has increased over the past few years, and I expect that to continue. My hon. Friend is also right to say that the Scottish economy is growing, with record numbers of people in work. As I said earlier, it is important that we concentrate on the good that can come from this week—for Scotland and, more importantly, for the rest of the world. That depends on whether the world leaders gathered in Gleneagles in the next few days can make sure that firm action is taken to put in place a programme to help alleviate and end poverty, and deal with climate change.

Eleanor Laing: I agree with the Secretary of State that Saturday was a great and peaceful triumph. Let us hope that the scenes that we saw yesterday are not repeated through the rest of the week. Although Scotland and the rest of the country will benefit from the G8's presence at Gleneagles, a repetition of those scenes will mean that people who live and work in and around Auchterarder will not. If damage is caused and people there suffer loss as a result, will the Government undertake to compensate them?

Alistair Darling: It would be better for us to concentrate on supporting the police in the action that they must take to contain people who are not prepared to demonstrate peacefully. The police have made it clear, however, that they are anxious to accommodate people who wish to demonstrate and protest peacefully. Many of the organisations represented in Scotland this week have been in touch with the police and made the necessary arrangements. The problem yesterday was that the people involved refused point blank to co-operate with the police, which made events difficult to control. The Lothian and Borders police force, and the other forces involved, deserve our full support for what they did to try and contain the demonstration. I am sure that other forces will do exactly the same in the ensuing days, if necessary. However, we must all do everything we can to ensure that the demonstrations are peaceful and that people are able to go about their day-to-day activities.

Eleanor Laing: Again, I agree with the Secretary of State and completely support what he says. I also offer my total support for what he is trying to do.
	Will the right hon. Gentleman ask the Prime Minister to assure President Chirac that Scotland's agriculture and food production are major economic assets? He might like to point out that Robert Burns was right when he compared "French ragout" and
	"fricassee that would mak her spew"
	unfavourably with the
	"great chieftain o' the pudding race"?
	Does the right hon. Gentleman share my hope that the many thousands of extra visitors from the world's press at Gleneagles might discover just how good haggis is? That would increase its sales around the world, and boost Scotland's economy.

Alistair Darling: I am sure that the haggis industry will much appreciate the hon. Lady's endorsement of the product, and that many hon. Members present will agree with her too. On the broader point, I am sure that there will be many interesting and long conversations over the dinner table at Gleneagles this week.

Gordon Banks: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be inappropriate to consider the economic benefit of the G8 summit too narrowly? Will not Scotland derive the greatest benefit from decisions made at Gleneagles to eradicate poverty in Africa and to ensure that continent's rise as an economic power? That regeneration will present an opportunity to develop Scotland's historic trading links with Africa.

Alistair Darling: I am sure that people caught up in yesterday's event, and whose businesses may have been affected, have legitimate concerns, and we are keen to understand their position. My hon. Friend is right to say that the G8 presence in Scotland, and our presidency, present us with a unique opportunity to deal with some major problems that affect the whole world. As I say, I hope that this week is remembered for what the world began to do in the long process of ending poverty and dealing with climate change. Those are the big issues that we should keep in sight—not just this week, but next week, next month and over the next few years.

NASS

Ann McKechin: What discussions he has made with the Home Secretary on the operation of the national asylum support service scheme in Scotland.

David Cairns: My right hon. Friend has regular discussions with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary on a range of issues.

Ann McKechin: My hon. Friend will be aware that under the operation of the NASS scheme in Glasgow an increasing number of applicants have now exhausted their legal case. Several of them come from countries such as Iraq and Iran, so it is difficult for them to be returned to their country of origin. Can my hon. Friend assure me that every step will be taken to ensure that those applicants coming to the end of their NASS support will be able to transfer to so-called hard-cases support without any gap, and that—as far as possible—that support can be offered to them in Scotland rather than requiring them to move to other parts of the UK?

David Cairns: I am happy to give my hon. Friend the assurances that she seeks. It is the case that when an asylum seeker has their application turned down they are no longer eligible for assistance under the NASS scheme, but may in limited circumstances be eligible for support under section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Some 100 people in Glasgow currently receive that support. I have been assured that when an individual has been informed that they are no longer entitled to the NASS support they are informed there and then that they may be entitled to the section 4 support. If they make an application at that time, the gap that my hon. Friend fears should not arise. If she is aware of any particular cases where someone has fallen between two stools, I will pass them on to my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality.

Michael Connarty: I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware that one of the great benefits of the dispersal scheme is the impact of asylum seekers' children in the schools of Glasgow. Achievement by all children in those schools rose markedly because of the aspirations of the asylum seekers' children. He will also know that this week Dungavel, the former prison used as a detention centre, has been emptied of its occupants, including any children. Can he give me an assurance that he will work through the Scotland Office to prevent the return of children to Dungavel, as it is inappropriate to incarcerate children because their parents are asylum seekers?

David Cairns: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend's first point. I had a meeting with the newly elected leader of Glasgow city council, Councillor Steven Purcell at which he spoke highly of the impact that asylum seekers' children had made in that regard. Indeed, I pay tribute to Glasgow city council, the only council in Scotland that is taking part in the scheme to that extent.
	On the second point, operational matters at Dungavel are rightly and properly the responsibility of the Home Office, but no children are now detained there for longer than 72 hours, and if it is necessary to detain children for longer they are moved to the specialist family unit at Yarl's Wood.

John Robertson: I am glad to hear my hon. Friend congratulate Glasgow on being the only city to accept asylum seekers. Does he agree that it is time that other cities did their bit in accepting asylum seekers? Will he come to Glasgow, however, and talk with the council about the problems that we have? Finally, will he congratulate Glasgow on the great work it has done in hosting the special Olympics this week?

David Cairns: I certainly congratulate Glasgow city council on a successful hosting of the special Olympics. As I said, I have already had discussions with the council at leadership level about the impact of the dispersal programme in Glasgow and I was encouraged by the positive way in which Councillor Steven Purcell spoke about that programme. I am aware that other local authorities are having ongoing discussions through the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, and I hope that they will continue.

Make Poverty History Demonstration

David Marshall: If he will make a statement on the Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh on 2 July.

Alistair Darling: As I said a few moments ago, more than 200,000 people showed their support in Edinburgh on Saturday for making poverty history. It was a powerful message that world leaders need to heed.

David Marshall: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Make Poverty History demonstration was a tremendous success and a wonderful advert for peaceful persuasion? However, does he also agree that now it is over it must not be forgotten and that justice for the poor, trade justice and fair trade must remain our priorities? If he does agree, will he convey to our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister our wholehearted support in his efforts to get rid of the common agricultural policy that is the cause of so much poverty in the poor countries of the world?

Alistair Darling: My hon. Friend makes an important point. First, it is important that our Government, and other Governments, continue to do everything that they can to increase aid, reduce debt and join together to establish the international finance facility. All those measure will help to reduce, alleviate and eventually end poverty. That is very important.
	It is also important that we establish fair trade. That is why the Government attach considerable importance to making substantial progress at the discussions that will take place in Hong Kong at the end of this year.
	My hon. Friend is also right that in relation not just to the developing world but also for the good of Europe as a whole, it cannot be right in this day and age that about 40 per cent. of the EU budget is going on the common agricultural policy. It needs to be reformed, and if Europe is to be relevant to the people who live there it is important that its leaders have the courage to make the necessary economic and other reforms to make Europe more competitive, and also to improve the lives of people living in the EU member states.

Alex Salmond: The demonstration on Saturday was an enormously successful expression of popular will, exhilarating for all of us who took part. Does the Secretary of State agree that we want action and not just communiqués from the world leaders at Gleneagles? However, the scenes we witnessed in Edinburgh yesterday were ugly and violent, and the Secretary of State should not in any way underrate the legitimate fears of people in Auchterarder and elsewhere. Can anything positive be done to separate the huge legitimate public protest from the anarchist factions that want to turn cities and towns into battlegrounds?

Alistair Darling: The hon. Gentleman raises two points. First, as I have said before, it is important that the message that came from people on Saturday is heard loud and clear around the world, and that we keep it at the front of our minds not just this week but in the months and years to come. That is absolutely right.
	The hon. Gentleman is also right about yesterday's events. There is a world of difference between the peaceful, hugely enjoyable protest that took place in Edinburgh on Saturday—where people from all over the country had a fantastic day out, and a clear message was well and reasonably put—and what we saw yesterday, which was a handful of people who were more concerned about causing trouble and engaging in violence, and were more interested in their own activities than anything else. I think that most people in Scotland and throughout the world can see the difference between the two. It is important to contain any attempt at violent behaviour over the next few days. The police are determined to do everything they can to ensure that. They have been fully resourced and they have reinforcements from south of the border, as well as from Scottish police forces, to do everything that they possibly can to make sure that disruption is kept to an absolute minimum. It is important that people understand that legitimate protest is one thing, but that it is quite another to engage in mindless violence that has nothing to do with, and can only distract from, our attempts to alleviate poverty and to tackle issues such as climate change.

Anne Begg: What I noticed when I went round the demonstration on Saturday was that people were demonstrating to persuade the G8 leaders to get on with the job of making poverty history. They were not campaigning to stop the G8 going ahead; they want it to go ahead and they want the G8 leaders to act. When we contrast the 250,000 people who want G8 to succeed with the thousand who want it to stop, we can see that democracy is on the side of the majority. I hope that the Secretary of State will do everything in his power to make sure that the voice of the mass of the people who were there on Saturday is heard and not the voices off that we heard yesterday, which do not represent anything and cannot see anything good coming from G8.

Alistair Darling: I agree. Most people, not just people who were in Edinburgh on Saturday, realise that we need to build on our democratic institutions to achieve the change that we all want. That is the way to bring about constructive change. Destructive behaviour achieves nothing and, in particular, does absolutely nothing for the people who are starving even as we sit here today.

John Thurso: May I associate myself and my hon. Friends with the comments about the outstanding success of the demonstration last Saturday compared to the deplorable violence that we saw yesterday and to a certain extent today? Does the Secretary of State agree that there has been a long tradition in Scotland, through our Churches and many other organisations, of what is now expressed as the Make Poverty History agenda? How will he use his office to ensure that that voice is heard throughout Government and, in particular, to express that Scots feel that fair aid, fair trade and debt relief are not a matter of quid pro quo but are the moral imperative of the well-off to assist the less well-off?

Alistair Darling: I agree that it is very important that we continue to demonstrate that the Government are on the side and support the views of the people as expressed on Saturday. That is why, for example, earlier this year my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer set out a plan that he wanted to be implemented for Africa, which he described as the equivalent of the Marshall aid plan. Under that plan, the international finance facility, money would be made available to African countries. Meanwhile, Britain has led the way in writing off debt. Indeed, I believe that we have doubled aid over the last few years. We want to see more countries doing the same.
	It is important that the lesson we draw from Saturday is not only that something should be done but that we can do something about these problems. This is not rocket science. It is not impossible. Governments have it within their power to tackle and end poverty and to improve education, to make a real difference to millions and millions of people. It may be a big problem, but it is a problem that can be solved if Governments are prepared to take the right action. We are prepared to show a lead in that; we are prepared to play our part in the discussions that are taking place this week. I just hope that the rest of the world is prepared to join us in the same venture.

Eleanor Laing: Again, I agree with the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Glasgow, East (Mr. Marshall), but will the Secretary of State ensure that any costs that arise from dealing with the consequences of enormous numbers of people descending on Edinburgh to support this very good cause and, rightly, to make their voices heard will be met by the UK Government, not the Scottish Executive, because it is as a major British city that Edinburgh is rightly playing its current part?

Alistair Darling: This is a novel turn of events for the Conservative party. As I told the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) a few moments ago, our guiding principle is that we want to see international events like this staged in cities outside London. That is most important, but I do not think it follows that just because something is outside London, all the costs have to be met by the UK Government. Our substantial contribution of £20 million has been made with the complete agreement of the Scottish Executive, who are also making their contribution. A lot of the policing functions and other functions have been devolved to Scotland, so too the money that goes with them. But if the hon. Lady is calling for even more money to be sent to Scotland, perhaps she would have a word with her colleague the shadow Chancellor, because I am not sure that he takes the same view.

EU (Scottish Representation)

Angus Robertson: What discussions he has had with the First Minister about current arrangements for Scottish representation in the European Union.

Alistair Darling: I meet regularly to discuss a range of topics with the First Minister. The Scottish Executive have been working closely with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other Whitehall Departments—as they always do—in advance of our presidency of the European Union.

Angus Robertson: It is the quality of European negotiations for Scotland that determines the future of many jobs in a large part of the economy, including of course the threatened Ferguson's plant in Port Glasgow. Who does the Secretary of State blame for the lack of progress on that issue? Is it the Liberal Democrat Minister in the Scottish Executive with responsibility for this matter, or is it the Westminster Government, who appear to be doing nothing, or is it both?

Alistair Darling: I assume that the hon. Gentleman has in mind the procurement of a fishery protection vessel. That is a matter for the Scottish Executive. They are responsible for funding it; they are procuring it. There are, as he is no doubt aware, European rules in relation to that, which apply no matter which party happens to be in power, but I hope that everything that is possible can be done to help Ferguson's in the future. However, it is primarily a matter for the Scottish Executive, because it is their ship.

Brian H Donohoe: On the question of the European Union, surely the need to consider the representation provided by Scotland's MEPs is overdue. Perhaps we should extend the role of the Arbuthnott report to examine what has happened in terms of the representation offered to the ordinary person who may be trying to seek out their MEP. I was the agent for the MEP in the south of Scotland, and at that time it was understood who that was. Nowadays, there is no such connection but surely the need to re-establish it is overdue.

Alistair Darling: I am sure that if Sir John Arbuthnott wishes to make any comment on the system of electing Members of the European Parliament, he will do so although, as my hon. Friend knows, the matter is not entirely in our hands. I know that many people find list systems difficult to understand; that is one of the reasons that I asked Sir John Arbuthnott to consider all the electoral systems and advise us accordingly.

Fair Trade

David Hamilton: What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for International Development on encouraging fair trade in Scotland.

David Cairns: Ministers have discussions on a range of issues with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development.

David Hamilton: I thank the Minister for that answer. He will be aware that there are 32 local authorities in Scotland, 13 of which already have achieved fair trade status. A further 13 authorities are applying for fair trade status. Indeed, Midlothian council and Dumfries and Galloway council have made applications to join that group. Will the Minister use his facilities to write to every local authority in Scotland to ask them to take the lead and show the private sector and every other organisation that they should incorporate fair trade as part of their culture?

David Cairns: I am happy to congratulate Midlothian and Dumfries and Galloway councils on seeking fair trade status, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend who has been the driving force for that in Midlothian. It is excellent when local authorities seek fair trade status because it does two things: it raises awareness of fair trade products in the area and, because local authorities are significant consumers, it means that more and more fair trade products are sold. I would certainly be happy to encourage every local authority and, indeed, every public and private sector body in Scotland to consider seeking fair trade status themselves.

CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS

The Minister of State was asked—

Electoral Systems (Review)

Richard Burden: What plans her Department has to involve the public in the Government's review of electoral systems.

Harriet Harman: Officials in my Department are carrying out desk research to review the experience of the new voting systems that we have introduced.

Richard Burden: I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for that reply. Will she consider the fact that, with turnout at the last general election at just over 61 per cent.—the second lowest turnout since 1918—we face a real problem of disconnection and disengagement from the political process? We need to consider what the causes of that may be, including any contribution by the electoral system itself. What role will the public have in contributing to that process proactively, as well as reactively, because it should not just be left to us—after all, we have a vested interest in one system or another?

Harriet Harman: None of us should have a vested interest in one system or another: the point is that we need to get the right system. I agree that there is disconnection and disengagement—all of us must be concerned about that—but as for the idea that the single way to address the problem is to change the voting system, all I can say is would that it were so easy. As my hon. Friend will know, we have introduced a great deal of constitutional reform, including different electoral systems, many of which include a measure of proportionality. We are reviewing those systems, and officials in my Department are doing desk research. Obviously, if we were to introduce any proposal to change those systems, let alone those for the House, there would be full consultation.

Patrick Cormack: Is there not a great deal to be said for considering the suggestion made by the Leader of the House yesterday in his very thoughtful speech of a move towards compulsory voting?

Harriet Harman: For a start, we do not have any proposal on the table to introduce compulsory voting, backed up by criminal sanctions, but we must all think very hard about how we ensure that people are on the electoral register. A major problem is the near 3 million people who do not even get to the starting point because they are not on the electoral register. We must make absolutely sure that everyone is confident in the result of the election because it is free from fraud, but we must also ensure that people feel like turning out to vote, that they are committed to voting and that they vote. We need to address a range of issues—not just as the Government, but as individual politicians and members of political parties—although I am not sure that forcing people by law to go to the polls is the way to do that.

Robin Cook: As the review is considering the experience of Scotland, will my right hon. and learned Friend consider writing to all Scottish Members to tell them who is carrying out the review, when they will visit Scotland and who they will talk to there? Will she explain to all Members, from whatever part of the House, what opportunity there will be in the review for the public to express a view?

Harriet Harman: As I have already explained, the review is desk research to examine the experience of the systems that we have already introduced. If we were to come forward with proposals, obviously there would be an opportunity at that point for everyone, including my right hon. Friend, who has a great deal of experience of these things, to put forward their views, as they do continually as part of the debate. We are simply examining the experiences of the changed elections for the European Parliament, Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, Greater London authority and Mayor. We are examining a range of material and considering the effect of the considerable constitutional reform that we have already undertaken.

Alan Beith: Will this desk-bound research take account of relevant facts, such as the fact that it took 44,000 votes to elect a Conservative MP at the last election, 96,000 votes to elect a Liberal Democrat MP and only 27,000 votes to elect a Labour MP? Ought not the message to the public be that their votes count and will be counted fairly, rather than that they will be fined if they do not vote, which would be a real surrender to the nanny state?

Harriet Harman: Sometimes there is an assumption that there is a direct relationship between the voting system and people's preparedness to turn out. In other words, it is sometimes thought that under proportional voting, every vote would count, so everyone would thus go out to vote. I understand that line of argument, but if hon. Members look at the evidence from the turnout in different elections, there is not an automatic correlation between the type of electoral system and turnout. Turnout is influenced by what people think about their individual MPs, political parties, institutions and other matters, so a whole load of things aside from the electoral system affect turnout. People who propose change, as the right hon. Gentleman does, should not rest their entire case on a factual assumption that is not correct.

Madeleine Moon: The Minister will be aware that during the recent election in Bridgend, we had several problems due to the electoral registration office's failure to deliver postal votes and poll cards to a number of households. Does she have any plans to make it a requirement that post codes are contained on all electoral registers?

Harriet Harman: My hon. Friend refers to the variation of the ways in which the register is presented in different constituencies. Some show full addresses and post codes, which makes it much easier for the Post Office to deliver election addresses, yet others are not compiled according to postal address at all, but by the alphabet. It is important that we have consistency and high standards in all the different electoral registration areas, but, obviously, electoral registration must be conducted independently, so it would not be right for us to try to control the process. People should have their independent sphere of influence, but it is important for us to have good standards throughout the country. Colleagues with constituencies that cover two electoral registration areas often tell hair-raising tales of different standards in different areas.

Oliver Heald: But does the Minister agree with the Leader of the House that there should be compulsory voting and will she consult the public about that? In fact, will there be consultation before the Government make proposals on electoral systems? Surely it is contrary to liberty to force a person to vote. With turnout especially low in Labour constituencies, surely the onus is on the Government to raise their performance and give the people reasons to vote. At a time of rising violence, the police should be protecting the public from crime, rather than chasing non-voters and fining them £100 a time.

Harriet Harman: As I have said, we have no plans to introduce compulsory voting. If we did have plans to do so, there would be full consultation. Since the hon. Gentleman asked, I personally do not think that compulsory voting is the way to increase turnout. It is not just the Government's responsibility to encourage people to turn out because if his party wants to get elected, it must encourage people to turn out to vote for it. We must all address the problem.

David Winnick: Has my right hon. and learned Friend noticed a massive campaign to change the voting system, because I have not? Will she bear it in mind that as far as compulsory voting is concerned, it is not an accurate description of what my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House proposed? No one would be forced to vote. It would simply be an obligation on the part of the citizen to vote, to abstain in person or to indicate beforehand that they have no intention to vote. The system is used in other democracies, such as Australia. Why not here?

Harriet Harman: All of us who are in this place because of the electoral system have deeply held views about the voting system and what makes people turn out to vote. As I said, my preference is not to have compulsory voting backed by law.
	As for whether I have noticed a massive campaign to change the voting system, we do not necessarily have to wait for such a campaign before we have a sensible debate. We have to give acute attention to the voting system, the system for getting on the electoral register, how we tackle fraud, how we ensure that people have confidence in this House of Commons and what we as individuals do to ensure that that confidence is sustained. We do not need to wait for a massive campaign. A debate is going on and we listen to it.

Electoral Registration

Philip Dunne: What her policy is on the use of national insurance numbers as an identifier in electoral registration.

Harriet Harman: Outside of Northern Ireland, we have no plans to require national insurance numbers as a condition of going on the electoral register.

Philip Dunne: Does the Minister agree that restoring faith in the security of electoral registration and in postal voting is vital for increasing voter participation? Does she also agree that relying on signatures and dates of birth is not sufficient to eradicate fraud, and that we should consider using national insurance numbers, as they do in Northern Ireland?

Harriet Harman: I agree that it is vital to tighten security. I also agree that it is vital that people believe that the voting system is secure and that their votes are properly and fairly counted. However, I invite the hon. Gentleman to recognise, as the Constitutional Affairs Committee, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister Committee and the Electoral Commission have recognised, that there is, I am afraid, a trade-off between access to the register and full enfranchisement of all our fellow citizens on the one hand and security on the other. If, for example, we required everyone to come to the town hall with their passports and further proof of identification, we would have 100 per cent. certainty that there was no fraud—or at least a much better level of certainty than we have now. However, that would disfranchise loads of people from voting. We have to strike the right balance between access to the ballot box and security.

Rob Marris: May I welcome my right hon. and learned Friend's answer and urge her to be cautious about the use of national insurance numbers? There are alleged to be 5 million false national insurance numbers in circulation. Three years ago, my nephew, Brett, got a national insurance number. Two years ago, his younger sister got one with only one character different. A constituent and his two brothers similarly have national insurance numbers that are almost identical. So we should be wary of using national insurance numbers in the circumstances.

Harriet Harman: We can tighten up the system to reassure people that it is more fraud-proof without resorting to national insurance numbers as a condition of going on the register. We want to make it easy and straightforward for people to register, but we also want to make it easy and straightforward to detect fraud.

Jonathan Djanogly: Surely the point about national insurance numbers is that it is possible to crosscheck the information against the independent database of national insurance numbers and therefore check that the person exists, whereas there is no such way of checking the accuracy of other identifiers that the Government talk about, such as date of birth and signatures.

Harriet Harman: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about crosschecking information. We have all had experience of people who were turned away from the polling station and therefore unable to vote who say, "They won't let me vote and yet last week they sent me a demand for my council tax." That was raised by the Constitutional Affairs Committee, which said that there ought to be more cross-checking of data. Such checks afford an opportunity not only to tackle fraud and catch people out if they give wrong information, but to make sure that the woefully inadequate registers that disfranchise many of our poor, young, black fellow citizens are tackled.

Juries

Stewart Jackson: If she will conduct research on the ability of juries to understand complex trials.

Bridget Prentice: My Department has no plans to conduct research into juries' ability to understand complex trials. In January this year, the Department published a consultation paper, "Jury Research and Impropriety", and the relevant consultation period finished on 15 April. The responses are currently being analysed.

Stewart Jackson: I am grateful for the hon. Lady's reply, but is she content that the chairman of the Bar Council, Guy Mansfield, QC, described the current proposals as a "retrograde" step that will create a two-tier judicial system, with one system for white-collar criminals and another one for everyone else? Does she agree with her party's former shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), who said in opposition:
	"Fundamental rights to justice cannot be driven by administrative convenience"?

Bridget Prentice: I have no problem whatsoever agreeing with what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said as shadow Home Secretary. It is important that justice be seen to be done, and that it be swift and fair, which is one reason why we will ensure that jury trial and possible non-jury trial are fair both for the juror and for society as a whole.

Keith Vaz: Which Ministers from the Department were present at the famous seminar earlier this year, when the decision was made to change the Government's policy? Will the Government make any further proposals to remove juries from other parts of the British judicial system?

Bridget Prentice: I can reassure my hon. Friend that the Government do not have any plans to withdraw the jury system in any other sphere. I remind him and the rest of the House, however, that 95 per cent. of trials take place without sight of a jury, because they are held in magistrates courts.

Eric Forth: Why is it assumed that British juries are incapable of doing what American juries can do perfectly well?

Bridget Prentice: No such assumption is made at all. We have every faith in juries. We believe that they do an excellent job, and we intend that that should continue.

Judicial Appointments

Mark Lancaster: What her policy is on the minimum legal qualifications necessary for a judicial appointment.

Bridget Prentice: The eligibility requirements for judicial appointment are contained in various statutes and differ according to the post concerned. In general, however, they require an individual to have possessed rights of audience before the courts for a specified length of time. The requirements are currently under review, and an announcement will be made shortly.

Mark Lancaster: Is the Minister aware of reports that Mr. Justice Laddie recently resigned as a High Court judge because he was bored? Apparently, he disliked the isolation of the bench, and he missed the fun of working as part of a team. Given the controversy that that has caused, is the Minister still considering proposals to restructure the pattern of work for judges and to allow them to return to practice?

Bridget Prentice: I cannot comment on individual cases, but the characteristics needed to be a judge are many and varied, and they obviously include the ability to remain independent and to continue to work on one's own. However, we are looking at how best to help judges develop their careers, and we want to work with them in order to do so.

Vera Baird: As my hon. Friend will know, there are many highly qualified women lawyers who have never had the opportunity to become bored by a judicial appointment, because historically they have not been appointed to such posts. She will also know that entry to the legal professions is about 50:50 male/female. How confident is she that the judicial appointment commission will achieve a matching 50:50 split in the judiciary, and by when?

Bridget Prentice: My hon. and learned Friend is right. It is important that the judiciary show as much diversity as the rest of society. I hope the judicial appointment commission will take that on board. We should be proud of the fact that this Government appointed the first woman Law Lord, the first black woman High Court judge and the first Asian judge, who works part time. Today I agreed to meet the legal services consultative panel, among others, to see how we can further address the need for judicial diversity.

Electoral Systems

Anne Begg: What assessment she has made of the different voting systems in operation in the UK.

Harriet Harman: The review that my officials are conducting into different voting systems is at an early stage.

Anne Begg: I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for her answer to that and to earlier questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden). In her reply to my hon. Friend, she said there was not necessarily a link between turnout and the voting system. Our experience in Scotland suggests that there is a link. Where new voting systems have been introduced, turnout did not increase—it decreased. There are at present in Scotland three different types of voting system, soon to be four, and there is huge confusion among the electorate about what they are doing at each election. The number of spoiled ballot papers has also increased, which may disguise the level of turnout. What do the Government intend to do about that?

Harriet Harman: My hon. Friend makes a fair point. I am a London Member of Parliament and a London resident. On one and the same day we had the European elections on one voting system, the Greater London assembly elections on another voting system, and the mayoral elections on a third voting system. I readily admit that we were responsible for introducing all these voting systems. However, that justifies our sense that we need to take stock and understand how people are taking to these systems or not, before we accept the invitation from other hon. Members to rush forth for more constitutional reform.

HOUSE OF COMMONS COMMISSION

The hon. Member for North Devon, representing the House of Commons Commission, was asked—

Parliamentary Estate

Norman Baker: What recent discussions the Commission has had with authorities in the House of Lords on the environmental impact of the parliamentary estate.

Nick Harvey: The Commission has had no recent discussions with the authorities in the House of Lords on the matter. The parliamentary estate is managed by the Parliamentary Estates Directorate as one single entity, including management of its environmental impact.

Norman Baker: I welcome my hon. Friend to his position and assure him that I will do my best to keep him busy in his new role. Does he recognise that there is a lack of co-ordination between what happens at this end of the building and what happens at the other end? There is, for example, no common recycling scheme and no joint procurement—in other words, no joined-up Parliament. There is also a lack of joined-up Commons, in that Members duly separate their rubbish in their offices, only for it to be put together again in one bag by the cleaners subsequently. Is there not a long way to go before the House of Commons and the House of Lords get their environmental act together?

Nick Harvey: I shall pick up the point that my hon. Friend makes about waste streams. The problem is recognised and acknowledged. The authorities are doing what they can to resolve the problem. My hon. Friend states that there is a lack of co-ordination between the two Houses. May I assure him that officers of both Houses are working together closely on these matters and looking at ways in which we can improve our environmental performance?

Julian Lewis: To what extent does the hon. Gentleman consider that the Houses of Parliament contribute, by means of their output, to global warming?

Nick Harvey: I shall resist the temptation that the hon. Gentleman presents to make any puns. A great deal of work is being done to examine our energy conservation and waste management and on other environmental fronts. Given the constraints that we are under with a building of such an age, we are doing what can to keep our environmental impact to a minimum.

Members' Offices

Andrew Turner: How many hon. Members had no office at the end of each week since the state opening of Parliament.

Nick Harvey: The number of new Members who had no office at the end of each week since the state opening of Parliament was 120, 119, 98, 64, 30, one and, as of last Friday, nil. The problem is inevitable following an election, but it was exacerbated this year by the requirement to reallocate accommodation for many returning Members in line with the desire of the Accommodation Whips for a rebalancing of office allocation between the parties across the estate.

Andrew Turner: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his answer. Given the trend for more Members to have staff in their constituencies and the fact that there are now 13 fewer Members than there were in the last Parliament, has he observed any reduction in demand for office space around the parliamentary estate?

Nick Harvey: There has been no noticeable reduction in demand for office accommodation around the estate. As I say, it has been a particularly complex operation on this occasion, with more than half the planned moves taking place being for returning Members rather than for new Members.

Sadiq Khan: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that any danger of new Members having delusions of grandeur was soon gone following seven weeks spent squatting in other Members' offices and/or the canteen? Will he look into how many Members have had computers or phone lines installed and have had a full complement of furniture in those seven weeks since first being elected by the public?

Nick Harvey: It is acknowledged that there have been problems on these fronts. Experience has shown that there is a maximum number of moves that can be undertaken in one week if an acceptable standard of service to Members is to be sustained. There has undoubtedly been a bottleneck as a result of some Members asking staff to change the positions of already installed telephone and IT equipment, diverting them from getting on with the task of installing new equipment for new Members. The Serjeant at Arms and his Department intend to ensure that lessons are learned so that next time round the target of getting all new Members into an office within a month of an election can be achieved.

Anthony Steen: In view of the fact that hairbrushes and combs have been removed from the Members' Cloakroom on the grounds of the risk of spreading HIV or lice, could the Speaker ensure that all—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I hate to tell the hon. Gentleman again that his request is beyond the scope of this question. Perhaps we should run a course to help him to get it right, because he is putting me in great difficulties. I am afraid that he cannot ask about combs and the spread of HIV, as the question is about offices.

Anthony Steen: I was going to ask that in future, before offices are allocated, brushes and combs should be installed in all Members' rooms so that they could not spread HIV or lice.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members can bring in their own combs.

Patrick McLoughlin: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there are great variations in the accommodation that is available to Members of Parliament, ranging from some that is excellent to some that is fairly awful? Will the Commission take that on board, and ensure that no Member in the next Parliament has to have an office with no window?

Nick Harvey: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and the Commission can certainly consider it during the course of this Parliament in the hope that we can offer new Members coming into the next Parliament the best possible premises in which to do their work.

LEADER OF THE HOUSE

The Leader of the House was asked—

Legislative Scrutiny

Tony Wright: What proposals he plans to bring forward to ensure that legislation is scrutinised more effectively.

Graham Allen: Which Bills the Government plan to submit for pre-legislative scrutiny in this Parliamentary session.

Nigel Griffiths: I welcome the progress towards making the legislative process more effective and accessible to the public. We have ensured a significant increase in the number of Bills published in draft for pre-legislative scrutiny. However, there is more that we can do, particularly to improve the effectiveness of our Standing Committee scrutiny, and I hope that the Modernisation Committee will consider that.

Tony Wright: Over the years, we have had umpteen reports which show that we do not scrutinise legislation effectively here, with the result that our legislation is often flawed. We all know that that is true. We still do not see enough draft legislation, we legislate too much, our Standing Committees do not work well in scrutinising and, when amendments come back from the other place, we often do not consider them at all. In the next phase of modernisation, will my hon. Friend give his attention to making scrutiny more effective?

Nigel Griffiths: I am of course happy to do that, and I pay tribute to the part that my hon. Friend has played through chairing the Public Administration Committee with distinction. Nobody would claim that our scrutiny is beyond criticism, but we sit for longer than most legislatures and our mechanisms for scrutiny here, in the other House and through Joint Committees, are invaluable and detailed. Of course, we will consider any proposals to improve on that with great care, and I hope that we could act swiftly on them.

Chris Grayling: May I invite the Deputy Leader to consider using the opportunity presented by the concerns about the Licensing Act 2003 to establish a pilot project for post-legislative scrutiny? We could thus not only examine what is going wrong with that measure but ascertain how best we can establish a process for considering measures after implementation when it clearly has unforeseen consequences.

Nigel Griffiths: There is a well recognised mechanism for post-legislative scrutiny. Our Select Committees do an excellent job of undertaking that in key cases. The Liaison Committee reinforced that message in its annual report in 2002. Combined with valuable pre-legislative scrutiny, that makes the House one of the most effective legislatures at scrutiny. I shall not be Chirac'd by the hon. Gentleman into subjecting us to ill informed views on how the House works through post-legislative and pre-legislative scrutiny, simply to make cheap political capital.

Graham Allen: Does my hon. Friend ever see the day arriving when the Government allow Parliament to do the job that the public expect of us?

Nigel Griffiths: I hope that all hon. Members take it on themselves to do the job that our electors expect of us. I believe that the House is more open than many other legislatures. Although I am not complacent about improvements that have been made in my time in Parliament and will be made in future, I believe that every hon. Member has a duty to ensure that the Executive are held to account and that legislation is of the highest quality. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend to secure that objective.

Transport Innovation Fund

Alistair Darling: With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the transport innovation fund, as well as setting out how we are taking forward the development of a national road pricing scheme.
	We said in our manifesto that we would examine the potential for moving away from the current system of motoring taxation towards a national system of road pricing, which, with a range of other measures, would tackle congestion in the long term. Congestion on the roads is a complex problem, which will need a range of measures to tackle it successfully. They include investment in public transport, as well as measures to get more out of the network, for example, through better traffic management and car pool lanes.
	Our strong economy, demography and the fact that we live on a crowded island mean that we need to plan ahead now for the pressures that we will face in the next 20 to 30 years. Road pricing is about making journey times by car more reliable for motorists and getting more out of the road network. Today I want to set out what the Government are proposing for developing the concept of road pricing further, the role of the transport innovation fund and further work that needs to be done.
	My Department is also publishing its two new congestion targets today. They focus on improving the reliability of journey times on the strategic network and the movement of people on urban roads. The Government set out their intention to establish the transport innovation fund in the White Paper, "The Future of Transport", which we published last July. We pointed out that, without radical measures, including more effective demand management, road congestion would get worse. That is why we need to consider whether road pricing would allow us to get more out of the network, especially at peak times.
	If we were to implement a national road pricing scheme, we would not do it all in one go. That would not be possible. A road pricing feasibility study that was published in parallel with the White Paper last year recommended that it would be far better for local or regional schemes to be piloted to test approaches as road pricing was further developed. The transport innovation fund is part of that. Indeed, the fund is central to the approach that I set out in the White Paper. It offers substantial long-term investment and will support smarter, better management of the capacity that we have. It will also ensure that we can plan ahead to prepare for the long-term challenges that we face.
	The transport innovation fund will be used to support the delivery of infrastructure schemes that will promote our national productivity. Transport that is well planned and sensitive to our environmental and social objectives is fundamental to our sustained prosperity, through road improvement as well as rail and light rail schemes, for example. The fund will also be used to support local plans that will help to tackle congestion. We are looking for proposals that combine some form of demand management, such as road pricing, with better public transport. These pilot schemes will contribute to our work on national road pricing.
	Today, I am publishing further information on how we expect to deploy the transport innovation fund, which will come on stream from 2008–09 and is set to increase over time, reaching some £2.5 billion by 2014–15. We are also today asking local authorities to bid for development funding, which will be made available over the next three years to support planning for local demand management schemes in which pricing is a major element. We have set aside £18 million between 2005–06 and 2007–08 to support preliminary scheme development by local transport authorities. These schemes could ultimately be funded from the transport innovation fund. Within the fund, therefore, we are prepared to ensure that up to £200 million a year is ultimately available to support such local pilots. If more good schemes emerge, more can be made available.
	The guidelines for bidding for this pump-priming development work are today being placed in the Library, published on the Department for Transport website and sent to all local highway authorities in England. If a local authority or group of local authorities in Scotland or Wales wish to introduce road pricing pilot projects, they could do so in conjunction with the Scottish Executive or the Welsh Assembly Government. The Department will be happy to work with the devolved Administrations on such schemes, given their national implications.
	Ahead of any future national scheme, parts of the country already experiencing congestion may wish to develop road pricing schemes to improve travel within their area. If road pricing is to be developed, we need to pilot a scheme covering one or more local authority areas or, for example, a passenger transport executive, in which congestion is already a problem and the local authorities want to do something about it. We want to work with local authorities to develop and implement a pilot scheme for road pricing. No decisions have been taken on where such a pilot might take place, but we hope to identify partner authorities willing to work up pilot proposals within the next year. We hope that they will then start work on the ground with support from the transport innovation fund when it comes on stream.
	As well as making available the money through the transport innovation fund, we are taking forward a programme of work that would enable us to take decisions on road pricing in the future, and which covers three key areas. The first relates to the shape of a national scheme. National road pricing could take different forms, and we are looking at the options and the scale of benefits that each would bring. We are also looking at how best to address the environmental issues, particularly the problem of vehicle emissions and climate change. We clearly need to encourage the development and use of cleaner vehicles. However, we also need to avoid designing a scheme that is too complex or costly to run.
	The second element of our work relates to technological capability. We need technology and systems that can be provided at an affordable price and to a satisfactory level of reliability. We need to engage with the industry to discuss the technologies that exist today and those that might be developed in the future. Much of the technology already in use for commercial purposes might be suitable, and might come with the benefit of working in practice. For instance, one UK insurance company is already piloting a new system of pay-as-you-drive insurance, which uses a satellite box fitted in the car to calculate the cost of the insurance premium on a monthly basis, and sends to car users as an itemised bill that looks almost exactly like a mobile phone bill.
	Many cars are already fitted with technology thatcombines satellite positioning with mobile communications to provide facilities such as useful information on road conditions, and in 10 to 15 years, such technology will be commonplace. But we need to establish what technological options there are for putting together distance, place and time of travel. We are looking at what is working now, and how we could approach pricing in a way that allowed us the scope to benefit from future technological development. While cross-party support to examine the benefits that road pricing might bring is important, the lesson of recent times is that we need a consensus not just among politicians but among the public. We are considering how to provide the safeguards that would need to be built into the system: for example, to respect individuals' privacy and to ensure that the right price is put on the right journey in a way that motorists can see and understand.
	A great deal of work has already been done on some of those issues in the development of the lorry road user charging scheme. That has confirmed that a distance-based charge has the potential to be a workable and practical way forward. But our thinking on national road pricing has developed further. We are now taking forward work on a national system of road pricing, so it is right for us to take forward the plans for distance-based lorry charging as part of the wider work onnational road pricing—to develop a single, comprehensive, cost-effective system.
	Although, therefore, the current procurement for lorry road user charging will not continue, we will continue to work with the industry and to ensure that we carry the full experience gained from the project into the wider work to develop a national road pricing system for cars and lorries. We will also continue to work with the haulage industry to ensure that its needs are represented as we develop a national road pricing system.
	For the sake of completeness, and with your permission, Mr. Speaker, I ought to draw the House's attention to a written statement made by the Treasury today. In the Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that, owing to the sustained volatility in the oil market, the annual inflation-only increase in the main fuel duties would be deferred until 1 September. The Financial Secretary has today announced that the Government will not go ahead with the planned inflation increase on 1 September, including for rebated oils, biofuels and road fuel gases. The position will be reviewed again at the time of the pre-Budget report.

Alan Duncan: Today's statement is somewhat overdue. The Department's July 2004 White Paper, "The Future of Transport", stated that
	"mechanisms for deciding on allocations from the Transport innovation fund will be published alongside regional guideline budgets in the 2005 budget."
	Well, they were not. What we see now is another example of a total lack of openness in the run-up to the election.
	Last year's White Paper undertook to establish the so-called transport innovation fund, the purpose of which was expressed in the inevitable jargon that bedevils the well-meaning intent that goes with this policy—that the Government wish to
	"give our delivery partners incentives to develop and deploy coherent, innovative, local and regional transport strategies . . . which will include road pricing, modal shift, and better bus services".
	Today, therefore, we get this somewhat unexpected announcement. Given the past track record of the Secretary of State's Department, we will all be suspicious that something of far greater magnitude is going on behind the scenes, about which we are not being told. From what he has said today, we can now see exactly what he is up to.
	The entire statement is only obliquely about the transport innovation fund. In fact, it is about the introduction of road pricing. For the Secretary of State to label it as a statement on the innovation fund, and then at 20 minutes' notice to reveal that it is in fact a detailed announcement about road pricing, makes a complete mockery of our parliamentary proceedings, and makes it very difficult for an Opposition spokesman, or indeed the whole House, to have any respect for his integrity in honestly handling parliamentary courtesies.
	The innovation fund is not in any way about helping local authorities devise integrated transport policies for their local area: it is the Trojan horse through which nationwide congestion charging will be established throughout the UK. Why could not the Secretary of State have been honest and straightforward about that in advance? Perhaps that is why we now know why the fund's budget will increase from about £200 million to £2 billion over the next 10 years.
	This is not about innovation but about centralisation and the imposition of road pricing. The supposed benefit to local communities is in fact an extension of the central power of Ministers to direct money where they choose, outside the usual system for allocating funds, and to establish road pricing through the back door. Were this genuinely about the innovation fund, many of us would want to know what the Secretary of State's definition of innovation is. I might not be alone in sharing a concern that this centralised scheme might create perverse incentives for local councils to devise schemes that spend a budget, rather than support schemes that they really need.
	Were this genuinely about the innovation fund, we might also ask whether the fund will be applied to "innovative" schemes already under way. The Secretary of State has mentioned in written answers to me and to others that the Manchester metrolink will be a candidate for money from the fund, but can he guarantee that other ongoing projects will be able to apply for money?
	I read in the right hon. Gentleman's statement on the White Paper last year that the fund would be used to support
	"innovative mechanisms which raise new funds locally".
	We now know that by that he meant congestion charges and higher road taxes. Now that we are aware that this is all about road pricing, let me repeat some, if not all, of the questions I asked the right hon. Gentleman on the occasion of his lecture to the Social Market Foundation, to which I have not yet received a reply.
	Will every road have a price levied on it? Will local people have a say on local tariffs? Will there be one national scheme? Will the Mini pay as much as the Bentley? How will foreign cars be charged? Has the right hon. Gentleman considered the civil liberties issues, given that the state will trace our every move? How long will car-tracking data be held? Will the police and the Security Service have access to that data? What is the status of the "spy in the sky" technology? How much will a tracking box cost? What will the pilot scheme assess if it is working only in a limited local area? Can the right hon. Gentleman give an unqualified guarantee that the motorist will be no worse off as a result of what he is proposing?
	The Secretary of State has not played straight today. It is the hallmark of his Department, and in my opinion it is no way for the business of government to be conducted.

Alistair Darling: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman struck that tone. [Interruption.] In some ways it did not surprise me, however.
	For the sake of completeness, the hon. Gentleman might wish to report that he and I have had a number of conversations about this subject, and about road pricing. I said, among other things, that I would be happy for him, and indeed his colleagues, to visit the Department to discuss the issues.

Alan Duncan: We are still waiting.

Alistair Darling: I understand that arrangements have already been made for such a meeting. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman feels that he has somehow been wronged. He knows, as do others who have dealt with me, that I try to be straightforward. I am also rather puzzled by his reference to having received the statement "at 20 minutes' notice". I devoted considerable effort to ensuring that he received it, and supporting papers, an hour in advance as usual, and he should have done so.
	The hon. Gentleman said that last year we published outline proposals for the fund, and that its purpose was not clear. I refer him to page 134 of the White Paper published last year, which states:
	"We will establish a new Transport innovation fund, to support the costs of innovative and coherent transport measures—which will include road pricing, modal shift, and better bus services. And we will also support innovative mechanisms which raise new funds locally."
	I do not think the hon. Gentleman can say that he did not know what the transport innovation fund was for. True, the information was on page 134, perhaps requiring the reader to peruse the preceding 133 pages, but it was fairly clear. Similarly, in the opening paragraph of my statement today I made it clear that I wanted to talk about the innovation fund, and about how we were progressing with the national road pricing scheme. [Interruption.]
	The hon. Gentleman keeps pointing at the monitor. As he will know—but perhaps he does not; I am not sure that he was ever in the Government—it cannot carry an entire essay. It tends to truncate the headlines. I think that he is making a fuss about nothing.
	The hon. Gentleman made a couple of more important points. He asked about Manchester. The position on Manchester and its access to the innovation fund is exactly as I described it on 16 December last year in a written statement to the House. The fund is there to encourage local authorities and passenger transport executives to consider imaginative ways of dealing with congestion.
	As for road pricing, as the hon. Gentleman knows, a number of big questions still need to be answered. I raised the matter a few weeks ago and returned to it today because I believe that the country has an obligation to look at the problems that we face over the next 20 or 30 years and do something about them. I am bound to say that I was pleasantly surprised when the hon. Gentleman said on the day of my announcement that he was prepared to consider some of these proposals. The attitude that he struck today is rather different and I am somewhat surprised by it. I should point out to him and his colleagues that these are huge issues and that they need to be looked at. If we are to make progress, we will need to consider piloting in a smaller part of the country, rather than going straight to a national scheme. I am pleased to tell the House that different parts of the country have shown a surprising amount of interest in beginning to tackle what is a big problem—one that will affect successive Governments in years to come.

Ronnie Campbell: For people in my constituency, the only means of transport into the conurbation of Newcastle is by bus or car, so they will have to be charged for going there. There is a rail link—the Blyth and Tyne line—but there is no money to be spent on it. Will this innovation fund spend money on such rail links?

Alistair Darling: We are already spending considerable sums on the railways—in fact, in the past seven years we have doubled the amount being spent. Moving to road pricing involves moving away from the current system of taxation to a charge based on distance travelled, so it is a big step. The objective is to get more out of the existing capacity, but I repeat the point that I made to the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan): much of the detail still needs to be worked out, but if we do not start thinking about the system's possibilities, we face a future of increasing gridlock. I will get back to my hon. Friend concerning the railway line that he asks about—he has mentioned it on several previous occasions—but as he will appreciate, I do so without promising anything specific.

Tom Brake: I, too, thank the Secretary of State for an advance copy of the statement. But in keeping with the experience of the official Opposition spokesman, my office received this unusually long statement—compared with normal statements in this House—only 20 minutes beforehand. As the official Opposition spokesman also suggested, a title for today's statement such as "Road User Pricing" would perhaps have been a more accurate description of the subject that we are briefly debating today. However, our position on road-user pricing has not changed. We welcome this debate, we agree with the Government that radical measures are needed, and it is of course sensible to implement pilots first. Only in years to come will the House be able to tell whether the transport innovation fund has proved effective in funding delivery of the pilot schemes.
	A number of questions arise from the statement. Is the transport innovation fund new funding, or has the money in fact been taken from elsewhere in the Department for Transport budget? The statement makes it clear that such funding is available only for pump priming, yet for many projects there will be revenue implications. It is regrettable that, apparently, the transport innovation fund will be unable to provide such support. Will the Secretary of State say whether there is any risk of local authorities that have secured transport innovation funding discovering that they then have to underwrite the costs—underestimated costs, regrettably—associated with providing free bus passes, for instance? The risk is that funds coming into the system at one point might have to go out at another.
	The transport innovation fund might deliver the pilots that we need to test the feasibility of road-user pricing—or not. In three years' time, when the fund really comes on stream, the House will find out.

Alistair Darling: I shall ask for inquiries to be made about the provision of advance sight of today's statement. All that I know is that I asked that it, together with the supporting documents, be in the hands of the official Opposition an hour beforehand, which is the normal practice. I must say that that did not always happen in my time in opposition, but I do feel strongly about this issue and if something has gone wrong, I apologise. I will find out what happened, given that it appears to have happened to both principal spokesmen.
	The transport innovation fund will rise from about £290 million to £2.5 billion by 2014–15. It is part of the additional money allocated to the Department for Transport in last year's spending review. The purpose of the fund is specifically to support innovative projects to tackle congestion and improve productivity. It is in addition to the normal course of funding that the Department embarks on, whether it be for local authorities, the Highways Agency, railways or whatever. The vast majority of the Department's budget is allocated in that way and the fund is supplementary.
	The hon. Gentleman asked specifically about funding for pensioners' travel. As he will know, the Chancellor allocated an additional £350 million in the last Budget. That is a completely distinct amount, which is available from next year. It is wholly separate from the transport innovation fund.
	I take the hon. Gentleman's point that, at this stage, before a pilot scheme has been established, it is impossible to evaluate it. My point is that if we as a country decide to make the change, it would be foolish to switch over from the present system to something entirely new without having seen, tried and tested a system. That is why I would encourage local authorities or groups of local authorities to work with us to achieve that. I repeat the point that I made to the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton—that the transport innovation fund is also available for other measures. I used the example of Manchester, which has the opportunity to put in a bid, so the fund is not exclusively for road pricing. That is why I said that the transport innovation fund is about the transport innovation fund.

Doug Henderson: We all know that there is severe congestion in all parts of the country. In my constituency on the west of Newcastle, the A1 is very heavily congested in the morning and the evening, partly as a result of commuters from the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth Valley (Mr. Campbell) making their way into the Tyneside conurbation. May I tell my right hon. Friend that I support the principle of differential pricing, which I believe is a way of getting better capacity out of the roads? However, I believe that it will be unsuccessful unless we have working patterns different from our current ones. In that connection, does my right hon. Friend agree about the need to consult employers, trade unions and school governors about working times?

Alistair Darling: I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend about that. Indeed, a number of employers are already looking into varying the times at which their employees start and finish work. That is happening in different parts of the country and I believe that it will become commonplace in the years to come. As to schools, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills is considering the problem with local education authorities. Something like one in five cars on the road at 10 minutes to 9 in the morning are on the school run.
	I appreciate my hon. Friend's point about the A1. Much of the traffic comes from different parts of Newcastle, Gateshead and the surrounding areas. When the Department considered a study that was set up to examine the problem, we realised that whatever happens to transport in Newcastle, it will have to be looked at across the piece. It is not just a question of the A1, as much of the volume on that road is commuter traffic rather than traffic coming down into England from Scotland. We certainly need to reflect further on the problem.

George Young: The Secretary of State may be relieved to hear that at least one of his predecessors is not unsympathetic to the concept of road pricing, but subject to a crucial condition that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) mentioned—though the right hon. Gentleman did not reply to him. Is this proposition to be revenue-neutral on the motorist and, if so, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that those who travel in rural areas on lightly used roads may find that their motoring costs go down?

Alistair Darling: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who I know has spent a considerable amount of time thinking about transport—not just when he was Secretary of State, but since. He will understand some of the problems that we face, but I have to say that they have got rather worse, simply because of increased pressure on the roads, since he was Secretary of State.

John Bercow: Bring him back!

Alistair Darling: We have no plans to do so, as they say.
	I have made the point on a number of occasions that if we move to a system of road pricing, we would be moving away from the present system of taxation. We could not have a charge on top of a charge. It would have to be something instead of the present system. I strongly recommend that the right hon. Gentleman, if he has not already done so, have a look at the feasibility study that I mentioned in my statement. It found that we could have almost 40 per cent. less congestion at peak times and that nearly half of people would pay less than they do at present. In fact, if we could reduce even 4 to 5 per cent. of the volume of traffic at peak times, it would have a very dramatic effect. I understand perfectly well where the right hon. Gentleman is coming from on this matter and I am grateful to him for putting his point so reasonably.

Mark Lazarowicz: My right hon. Friend is obviously right to try to achieve consensus on the proposed scheme, although the attitude displayed by the Conservatives, and the less than wholehearted support given by the Liberal Democrats, suggest that that might be hard. Will he ensure that we do not end up putting all our eggs into the basket of the national road user charging scheme, at the expense of the fairly radical measures to tackle road congestion that must be taken in the next 10 or 15 years? Congestion will get a lot worse before any road user charging scheme can come into effect.

Alistair Darling: As I said in my statement, we must secure a degree of consensus on this matter. Consensus among politicians is desirable, although achieving it may take time and in the end may not be possible. However, there also needs to be a wider debate in the country on these matters, as they represent a huge change. On the day that I gave my speech to the Social Market Foundation, a Conservative Member stopped me and said that we would have to see how long the consensus lasted—

Alan Duncan: Was that me?

Alistair Darling: No, the hon. Gentleman thought of that some time later. Consensus may be difficult, but we have to achieve it. The easiest thing in the world is to say and do nothing, but that would be the worst possible option for most motorists, and that is why we must look at these matters.
	With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to tell the House that I have made some inquiries—or inquiries have been made on my behalf—about the statement text. Apparently, it left my office at 2.35 pm, but something went wrong subsequently. I apologise to the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesmen for that. Their predecessors will know that, when I make statements, I make a point of getting the text to those who need it the requisite hour before.

Angus MacNeil: The Secretary of State will know that the highlands and islands have long laboured under very high fuel charges. Should not any road pricing scheme ensure that fuel prices in those areas are substantially lower than at present, given that people currently pay as much as £1 per litre?

Alistair Darling: The hon. Gentleman knows that I am well aware of the fuel prices in the western isles, as I have paid those high prices on many occasions. He is right, to the extent that road pricing would depend on distance travelled and on a given road's level of congestion. Various prices were modelled in the feasibility study that we published last July, but a lot of work remains to be done. If any national system were established, it would be UK wide. Scottish local authorities' participation in the piloting process would depend on whether they wanted to take part, and on their willingness to work with the Scottish Executive.

Adam Afriyie: Will the Secretary of State confirm that the fund will not be used for schemes that are not revenue neutral? People are worried that it will be used to raise additional revenue for the Exchequer, so will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that that will not be the case even locally?

Alistair Darling: The pilot schemes would work on the basis that people would be rebated the cost of their fuel, and they would run alongside the present system, so I am not sure the problem identified by the hon. Gentleman would arise. The aim of the pilot studies is to look at the technicalities involved in the scheme, and to determine whether it would work. The studies will also try to find out whether people's behaviour can be changed. The fund is also available for necessary improvements in public and other transport, and will not to be devoted solely to the road pricing scheme. A concerted effort to deal with congestion in a particular area means that money must be put into all aspects of transport, not just one.

Robert Smith: Towards the end of his statement, the Secretary of State made an announcement about lorry road user charging being suspended and rolled into total road user charging. The Chancellor promised hauliers a level playing field with the rest of Europe as they move from fuel tax and towards road charging. Will they now see that level playing field disappear over the horizon?

Alistair Darling: The hauliers are concerned about two things. First, they are worried about what they pay in comparison with what lorry drivers from France or Italy pay. Secondly, they are worried that a national scheme would mean that they would have to meet the costs of the lorry scheme, which might be higher than otherwise. The hauliers did not want the complexity that would arise if a scheme for the rest of transport were introduced after a lorry scheme, and that is something of which we are very conscious. The difference is that although the lorry duty charging scheme was first conceived in 2000 or 2001, matters have moved on since. It makes sense, if we are looking at a national scheme—specifically, at putting a fair amount of money into a pilot scheme—to bring the two things together. It would be a mistake to continue one separately because it was designed with slightly different objectives in mind.
	As I said earlier, we are determined to continue to work with the haulage industry, and we work closely with it through the forum that was established five years ago. I hope that the announcement about fuel duty today will also help the industry.

Michael Fabricant: When the Secretary of State considers technology, why does he always consider hammering the British motorist? Why is he not looking at technologies being researched in the United States to increase traffic density two or three fold, which would allow 100 million cars on our roads without congestion? Has he looked at such research? He talks about spending £2.5 billion on road pricing. Why not spend that money looking at ways to increase traffic density without the congestion that we do not want?

Alistair Darling: There are some 32 million cars on the UK's roads, and I do not know how on earth we would get 100 million cars on them. I would be surprised if thehon. Gentleman runs around his constituency promising to fill the roads to the point of gridlock, because that would not make any sense. If the hon. Gentleman was asking about the management of roads and ensuring the free flow of traffic, he may be aware that we are about to introduce a measure similar to one used in the United States, on the M42 in the west midlands—which is not a million miles away from the area that he represents.

Nia Griffith: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the scheme would provide a genuine incentive for individuals to seek more environmentally friendly forms of transport and that it would also be of benefit to those pensioners who use their cars only once or twice a week and thus do not get value for money out of the present system?

Alistair Darling: If someone uses their car rarely, the scheme will benefit them. It is also important that we maintain measures that encourage people to drive environmentally friendly cars, on top of other measures that the Government have introduced to encourage greater fuel efficiency and the growth in the use of biofuels.

Nick Hurd: Will the Secretary of State clarify one important message in his statement? In paragraph 17, he said that local authorities will be encouraged to bid for development funding, available in the next three years, to support planning for local demand management schemes where pricing is a major element. Does that mean that local authorities that have a different sense of local priorities—for example, authorities that wish to invest in a relief road or in soft measures to improve bicycle use or bus use—should take from his statement the message that they should not bother?

Alistair Darling: No, that is not right. The hon. Gentleman may not be aware of it, but last December, when the issue arose in relation to Manchester and its metro, I made it clear that nobody is telling Manchester that it has to adopt road pricing. The Department supports several measures, including relief roads and measures to encourage cycling. The scheme is one part of my proposals for the transport innovation fund. It is an important part, but it is not the only thing that we are going to do. We are doing, and will continue to do, other things in transport. However, if we are to pilot road pricing, we need to be prepared to spend some money doing so, and that is why I attach considerable importance to it. The Department will of course continue to fund other schemes, including relief roads and the other transport measures that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

Vincent Cable: The Secretary of State has rightly attacked the rail companies for their proposals for congestion charging on the railways. What proposals does he have to review the system of public transport regulation to ensure that their charging policies complement rather than undermine his welcome move to road pricing?

Alistair Darling: In any transport system, we have to ensure as far as we can that the schemes are complementary. My point about the railways was that a policy predicated on saying to people, "Don't go on the railways"—it more or less suggests that they should stay at home—is doomed to failure and I would not support it. The hon. Gentleman is right. As we try to introduce measures to ease the flow of traffic and make it easier for people to get around, other modes of transport need to complement that. We need to continue to invest in a wide range of transport and continue to ensure that we develop schemes that might make transport, and car travel in particular, easier in future. That is why we wish to establish the transport innovation fund.

Owen Paterson: We suffer from appalling congestion because we distribute our road assets in a manner similar to the manufacture of iron bars in Novosibirsk under the Soviet Union, so I am sympathetic to the idea. But I should like some clarification to the reply to my right hon. Friend the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young). The Secretary of State has used phrases such as new money, so if road pricing is to be brought in, can he clarify whether that money will entirely replace vehicle excise duty and fuel duty, which will be abolished?

Alistair Darling: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his preparedness to look at these things. As I said to his right hon. the Member for North-West Hampshire (Sir George Young) a few moments ago, if we were moving to a new system of charging on the basis of distance travelled, varied according to how congested a road is, that would be in place of the present system. We cannot have a situation where we simply impose additional charges; it would be a radically different way of looking at these things and we need to see whether it is feasible. We need to consider whether the gains that we think would come from such a scheme are possible. If we could achieve it, there would be a huge prize. Far from having 100 million cars on Britain's roads, as his hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) seemed to be hinting we should, most people would rather have roads that can be driven along rather than being used as a very big car park.

Charles Walker: Will the Secretary of State accept that we cannot preserve our roads only for rich people? In my constituency, there is genuine concern about some of the figures that have been talked about in the press—for example, £1.34 a mile, which would mean that a nurse commuting from Broxbourne to Chase Farm paid about £120 a week in charges. We could give her all the free petrol she could use and it still would not cover the £120 charge.

Alistair Darling: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have pointed out to his constituent that the study from which the figure of £1.34 was derived stated that the charges would range from 2p a mile to £1.34, and the   £1.34 would be paid by only 0.5 per cent. of the population, on a very narrow range of streets, at very busy times. We have to be grown up about these things, but inevitably, given a range of figures, people reporting these matters tend to go for the highest rather than the lowest. I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will want to tell his constituent that, and if he likes, I will happily write him a letter making that point, which he can pass on.

Andrew Turner: May I say gently to the Secretary of State that we do not all live on one island, overcrowded or otherwise? People who travel to and from my constituency are among the few who already pay charges, which vary, depending on congestion and distance, and considerably exceed £1.34 a mile. My constituents pay road fund licence fees and petrol duty in addition. The Secretary of State has a rural bus grant and the Chancellor has announced half-price bus fares for pensioners, so will the Secretary of State tell us whether the transport innovation fund can be used to extend those benefits to passenger ferry users?

Alistair Darling: I have to disappoint the hon. Gentleman. The transport innovation fund is not intended to fund concessionary travel of the sort to which I think he refers. I know that he had hoped to be in the Chamber at Transport questions to raise that point last time, but unfortunately he could not—I do not know whether the ferry held him up. Concessionary travel might be part of an overall strategy, but the hon. Gentleman asked specifically whether the fund could be used to support such travel—like the £350 million that the Chancellor has allocated for concessionary travel for pensioners—and the answer is, no, that is not what it is intended to do.
	I am well aware of the fact that not everyone in the UK lives on one island. I do not live on an island, but I know an island well and it is expensive to cross the sea to go there, so I understand that point perfectly. The hon.Gentleman will know that under successive Governments ferry fares are not always based on what it would cost to drive along a road—but there are other benefits to living on an island, as I am sure he knows.

Pharmaceutical Labelling (Warning of Cognitive Function Impairment)

Andrew Dismore: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for a warning symbol to be prominently displayed on the packaging of pharmaceuticals which act on the brain and central nervous system so as to impair dangerously the consumer's ability to carry out certain activities; and for connected purposes.
	This is the second time for this Bill—I secured a ten-minute rule motion in the last Session, but the general election meant that the Bill fell, as the scheduled Second Reading date was after the election. Since then I have continued to consult on the proposal with national organisations, as well as locally with pharmacists in my   constituency, directly and through the Barnet Pharmaceutical Committee, which is very supportive of the Bill, as is my local primary care trust. I have also held a consultation with local residents, and the responses that I have received are overwhelmingly in favour.
	Turning to the substance of the Bill, a psychoactive pharmaceutical is one that has a direct action on the brain and thus exerts its clinical effects, such as reducing depressive symptoms or levels of anxiety, or inducing a good night's sleep. Such pharmaceuticals are also used to treat panic attacks, post traumatic stress, obsessive-compulsive disorders and allergies. The direct action on the brain needed to alleviate the symptoms also gives the potential to affect other nervous functions for the accurate performance of the tasks of daily living, whether at home, on the roads or in the workplace, including the rate of information processing, alertness and attention, visual processes, motor co-ordination and memory. I would hazard a guess that most of us in the House today know someone who has used these perfectly legal drugs without knowing that if the user were then to take to the roads their judgment could be just as impaired as if they had drunk alcohol well over the legal limit.
	Over a five-month period, Professor Hindmarch of Surrey university conducted a pilot study in which blood samples were collected from people at two hospitals treating accidental injuries. The results of the study implied strongly that the presence of tricyclic antidepressants and benzodiazepines presented an increased risk of accidental injury. Under a different pilot scheme, information on contributory factors to road accidents was collected by 15 police forces in 2002 and 2003. The influence of drugs was recorded as a contributory factor proportionally on a par with the effect of excess alcohol, although it is not clear what proportion were legal or illegal drugs.
	In 2001, the Transport Research Laboratory published a study to measure the incidence of drugs in fatal road accident casualties. An earlier study published in 1989 had found that the incidence of medicinal drugs, at 5.5 per cent., and illegal drugs, at 3 per cent., was relatively low in comparison with alcohol at 35 per cent. However, the 2001 study, based on results collected between 1996 and 2000, found that the incidence of medicinal and illegal drugs in the blood samples of road traffic fatalities was three times higher than in the previous study, at 24 per cent., while the incidence of alcohol had fallen to 31 per cent.—again, figures roughly in parallel.
	A Canadian study of fatal road accidents in 1981 found that drivers who had used benzodiazepines were found culpable in 98 per cent. of the cases examined. Drivers involved in fatal road accidents who were taking antihistamines were found culpable in 72 per cent. of cases.
	There is no defined limit for drug use as there is for alcohol, and no such clear-cut test as the random breath test. Moreover, the law does not make a distinction between illegal or misused drugs and "over-the-counter" or prescription drugs, taken as directed by a GP or other medical practitioner. Just as we have come round to welcoming a culture that emphasises the need for warnings about alcohol levels—driving while drunk is no longer tolerated, and for most employers drunkenness at work is a dismissible offence—it is time to ensure that those using psychoactive drugs are aware of their effect.
	The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency provides advice to medical professionals, and doctors and pharmacists should provide information when dispensing prescriptions or other medicines. The Department for Transport is also currently researching the attitudes of UK health professionals about providing "fitness-to-drive" advice to the public. This includes an examination of advice given in relation to medication. However, this is not enough. Clearer labelling seems to me an excellent way both to alert the public to the unexpected hazards of what they may be taking to cure their ills, and to provide a clear safety message, triggering the need to consider the risks before driving or embarking on potentially hazardous work. Who would be willing to wield a dangerous power tool if they knew that their reactions might be seriously impaired?
	At the moment, there may be a pharmacy sticker stating, "Do not drive if you feel drowsy," or, "may cause drowsiness". But of course by that time it is already too late, as the safe limits will have been exceeded. Inside the package, there may be a tightly folded patient information leaflet. If people manage to unwrap it, they find the print so small and illegible that they need a magnifying glass to read it. Of course, for those of our fellow citizens or visitors to our shores who speak little or no English, the leaflet is of little use or no use at all—and as the language used is very rarely plain English, it is often not much help to the rest of us either.
	I do not believe that such warnings are adequate. The labelling is ambiguous and unhelpful. The patient is extremely unlikely to have insight into the actual level of drowsiness that is being caused in the brain. At present, those unclear or inadequate warnings could also leave the drug manufacturer, the prescribing doctor or the dispensing pharmacist at risk of a civil action for compensation for negligence if the patient suffers injury as a direct result of taking the medicine, without fully appreciating the risks, as a consequence of such a poor warning. The pharmacist who adopts present good practice by verbally supplementing the warning may well not escape liability, as things stand. The proposals in my Bill would significantly reduce, and probably eliminate, that risk of civil liability.
	My Bill would require the external packaging of those medicines known to have an effect on judgment to be prominently marked. I propose the use of a red triangle, meaning quite simply, "the use of this medication could seriously impair your judgment," although the Bill leaves the precise design of the warning to be decided after appropriate consideration and consultation. The main classes of medication, although there are others, that would fall into the red triangle category would be benzodiazepines, which are available only on prescription and used primarily for anxiety or sleep disturbance; tricyclic antidepressants, which are also available only on prescription; and antihistamines, which are available over the counter to treat common complaints such as hay fever and conjunctivitis.
	A report compiled by Loughborough sleep research centre identified those medicines that are available over the counter with the potential to cause drowsiness and, therefore, the potential to be hazardous. From the literature, it is clear that one antihistamine group—the H1 receptor—is particularly sedative and is even used for the relief of temporary sleep disturbance in some circumstances. The impairment caused by the recommended doses of at least two of those drugs is greater than that caused by the legal blood alcohol concentration limit for driving in this country. The elderly are particularly vulnerable to the sedative effects of those drugs.
	I do not suggest that those drugs are dangerous in themselves or that their use should be curtailed in either prescription or over-the-counter sales; rather, what I advocate is that, because those drugs will continue to be used regularly by huge numbers of the population, a red triangle marking would stand as an unambiguous warning that the ability to drive or work safely might well be impaired on taking the drug. That would give users more control over their activities and an option to seek different medication if appropriate. Choice and control in avoiding preventable accidents are of paramount importance.
	This view has already been taken in other countries. In Canada, a warning symbol was introduced under the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act 1996. In other countries such as France, the Netherlands and Denmark, a clear system of symbols is used: green if it is safe to drive; amber if caution is needed; and red to show that people must not drive. The European Commission has acknowledged the benefits of such a system and referred to the need for the appropriate labelling of medicines in the European road safety action programme for 2003 to 2010, which aims to halve the number of people killed on the roads by 2010.
	EU directive 2001/83, dated 6 November 2001, deals with the Community code that relates to medicinal products for human use. Article 62 states that warning symbols may be used on the packaging of medicines to provide a clear warning of possible adverse effect. It states:
	"The outer packaging and the package leaflet may include symbols or pictograms designed to clarify"
	the detailed technical information and a summary of the product characteristics, which are useful for health education and are set out on the packaging and patient information leaflet.
	Red triangle symbols are currently in use in Denmark, France, Iceland and Norway, and other versions of similar symbols are used in Austria, Belgium, Italy and Spain. The UK is lagging behind continental Europe. We should move towards a visible warning on those medicines that will leave no adult in any doubt about their potential effects. The red triangle is an obvious, visible warning saying, "Be careful what tasks you choose to do. Do not drive. Do not operate machinery." We need to act now to cut deaths and injuries on the road, in the workplace and at home. I hope my Bill will find favour with the House today.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Andrew Dismore, Stephen Pound, Martin Salter, Mr. David Hamilton, Dr. Alan Whitehead, Angela Eagle, Miss Anne Begg, Ann Keen, Mr. Neil Gerrard, Mr. Andrew Slaughter and Paul Flynn.

Pharmaceutical Labelling (Warning of cognitive Function Impairment)

Mr. Andrew Dismore accordingly presented a Bill to make provision for a warning symbol to be prominently displayed on the packaging of pharmaceuticals which act on the brain and central nervous system so as to impair dangerously the consumer's ability to carry out certain activities; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 12 May 2006, and to be printed [Bill 39].

Orders of the Day
	 — 
	Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill

[Relevant documents: Fifth Report from the Constitutional Affairs Committee, Session 2004–05, HC 276-I, on Legal aid: asylum appeals, and the Government reply thereto, Cm 6597, and Second Report from the Constitutional Affairs Committee, Session 2003–04,HC 211-I, on Asylum and Immigration Appeals, and the Government reply thereto, Cm 6236.]
	Order for Second Reading read.

Charles Clarke: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
	The Bill covers the aspects of the Government's five-year strategy on asylum and immigration, which was published last February, that require primary legislation. The purpose of the strategy is to make migration work for Britain. It includes measures to make our immigration system simpler, clearer and more robust. The reformed system will explain publicly and clearly who we will admit to the UK and why, and who we will allow to stay in the UK and why. It will also show that we enforce the rules rigorously in every respect.
	The UK needs economic migration. We welcome people who migrate here to work and study—they are an essential part of our society and economy. Anyone who looks back over the recent years and decades will be able to give testimony to the major contribution that they have made to the life of this country. We need migration to fill the gaps in our labour market that cannot be filled from the domestic work force. Of course, the Government will continue to welcome people who are genuinely fleeing persecution. However, as we do so we will not—and cannot—tolerate abuse of the system. That explains why the five-year strategy contains four major work streams, in each of which we work with a range of other countries to improve the effectiveness of our system.

Alan Beith: Has the Secretary of State considered carefully the interaction of the Bill with legal aid provisions and the warning of the Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs that lawyers deciding whether applicants face possible human rights concerns if deported should not have to gamble on funding decisions? Bearing in mind that the Government are sending people back to Zimbabwe and have been subject to challenge in the High Court on these matters, does he not realise what a chill that message sends through those who are concerned about the safety of those people?

Charles Clarke: Yes, we have considered those relationships. The Bill deals with some of those matters and the Lord Chancellor has made proposals in the other place on legal aid. He will continue to examine carefully the general aspects that the right hon. Gentleman raises. However, I hope that he agrees that it is important for legal aid resources to be focused on the people who most need them—the very people whom he described in his example. That is the purpose and intention of the Lord Chancellor's proposals.

Gerald Kaufman: May I ask my right hon. Friend about another aspect of legal intervention, namely, the way in which solicitors batten on to immigrants in this country who have legal problems? They charge money even for applications and then botch cases. I heard of a case this very afternoon involving the appalling Thornhills company in Manchester, which has botched cases so that they have to come to Members of Parliament anyway. Will my   right hon. Friend make solicitors involved in immigration matters registrable in the same way in which advisers are?

Charles Clarke: My right hon. Friend is completely correct, so perhaps I can take this opportunity publicly to urge Members to let the Home Office know if they are aware of people who behave in the way in which he describes so that those cases can be dealt with. We set out in our five-year strategy specific proposals to deal with the problem because the sad fact is that a number of decent people are essentially taken in by fraudulent practitioners. That process is misleading and causes despair—it is simply a money scam in a wide variety of different ways. I take what my right hon. Friend says seriously and invite colleagues to communicate to us cases that need to be addressed, as he did in his intervention.

Jim Cunningham: As my right hon. Friend progresses through his speech, will he address the problem of foreign students and the right of appeal? I am sure that he is well aware that universities are worried about that.

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is correct that there are concerns. I hope that he will forgive me if I address that matter later in my speech.

John Bercow: The Home Secretary should be aware that the proposed replacement of indefinite leave to remain with the right to remain for a period of five years, subject to revocation by his Department at any time, is of considerable concern. Further to the pertinent intervention of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), may I put it to the Home Secretary that the Aegis Trust, which is properly concerned with the genocide in Darfur, is horrified by the number of cases of asylum seekers from Darfur whom the Home Office judges it safe to return to Khartoum? That displays a truly staggering ignorance of the sinister character of the state apparatus in Sudan.

Charles Clarke: With great respect, the fact is that these are difficult issues. The Home Office is advised, as we rightly should be, by the Foreign Office about the conditions in any given country, whether it is Sudan, as the hon. Gentleman describes, or Zimbabwe, to which the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) referred. The principle, which must be right, is that we look at the circumstances of the individual and take those into account in the judgment process. I acknowledge that they are difficult judgments. I also pay tribute to the work of various non-governmental organisations that work in those areas. We talk to them—not all of which agree with us on every point, of course—about the right way to deal with the problem.

Evan Harris: I listened to what the Home Secretary said about the need to consider individual circumstances. He will remember that recently he said in response to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Steve McCabe) that all Members' representations in asylum cases will be looked at carefully. Yet as I understand it, Mr. Absolom Mashamba, featured in The Times this morning, has been moved from Campsfield house to Heathrow for deportation to Harare tonight, despite the fact that his case has appeared in a British national newspaper and that I gave detailed representation to the Home Secretary's ministerial colleague last Friday. I have heard nothing back. Even if I receive something this afternoon, there is no opportunity for me to make further representations on the basis of that. Will the Home Secretary assure me that he will stop the removal tonight so that further legal action can be taken by that man, who has been on hunger strike for 10 days?

Charles Clarke: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before the right hon. Gentleman replies, I remind the House that we are talking about the Bill. We should not use it as a peg to deal with individual cases that are under consideration.

Charles Clarke: I hear your injunction, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and will proceed with what I have to say about the Bill. However, the hon. Gentleman's representations were considered, as was my commitment to the House. I am not going to comment in detail on individual cases, but the issues are as I set out. Every individual case, including representations from Members, will be carefully considered.
	The approach taken in the five-year strategy was to identify four major streams of work. First, we wanted to establish a single points system for those coming to the UK to work or study. That would be designed to ensure that we target those workers that the UK most needs, that we simplify the current system so that it is easier for employers and applicants to use and for the public to understand, and that we make it more robust against abuse. That will be accompanied by measures to tighten our rules for permanent settlement and to simplify the appeals system. We will consult before the summer on what the new system might look like, but the legal measures needed in primary legislation to deal with that are covered in clauses 1 to 10 and 42 to 44.
	The second aspect to the strategy is that the Government are introducing a new asylum process, building on the major successes that we have had in reducing abuse of the system and speeding up the treatment of applications. The reduced asylum intake will enable us to fast-track almost all new cases and to maintain contact with asylum seekers at key points in the process, so that we are in a better position to remove individuals whose claims are not justified. The new process will be simpler and more effective for genuine refugees and it is complemented by a new strategy of refugee integration, which we published in March this year. Most of this part of our proposals will be dealt with by changes to administrative processes and by changes to the immigration rules through secondary legislation. Clause 38 develops our strategy of refugee integration effectively.
	The third part of our proposals establishes a fully integrated immigration control that is intelligence-led and uses new technology to check people before they depart for the UK, on arrival, while they are here and on departure from the UK. By 2008, we will fingerprint all visa applicants, who will have their details checked before they can board aircraft for the UK under the e-borders programme. Identity cards will help us to ensure that people do not work illegally or fraudulently claim access to services and benefits. We will check people out of the UK so that we know who has overstayed. Those checks will be supported by measures to crack down on employers of illegal workers and by closer working with the airlines to deal with individuals who use forged documents or who destroy them en route. Those measures are a major part of the Bill and are dealt with in clauses 11 to 36.
	Finally, we want to make a major new effort to increase the removal of failed asylum seekers. We will use £30 million of savings from the asylum budget to recruit 500 new front-line staff and we will continue our efforts to reach more agreements with major source countries on returns, building on the considerable successes that we have already achieved. That will help us, by the end of the year, to return more failed asylum seekers than there are new unsuccessful claims. We will achieve all of that through international co-operation—not through fortress Britain—with our European Union partners during the UK presidency by working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and by developing partnerships with major source and transit countries for immigration. Clauses 39 to 40 cover those measures.

Mark Prisk: The Home Secretary referred to the problem of illegally employed migrants which, as he and many hon. Members will know, has often resulted in human tragedy. Is he, like me, concerned about reports from an unnamed Government spokesman that just 12 individuals are employed in the central team dealing with that problem? Can he confirm that number—and if it is not correct, how many are there?

Charles Clarke: I cannot confirm the number from the Dispatch Box, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman. We are working closely with our colleagues across government, in the Department of Trade and Industry and elsewhere, to increase the impact on people who are employing illegal migrants. The measures in the Bill that I am about to set out will give us more power to do just that.

Keith Vaz: May I thank the Home Secretary for listening to hon. Members' concerns about family visit appeals? Is it still the Government's policy to remove the right of oral appeal? If so, where have abuses occurred in the system? Other hon. Members and I rely on that system to show that the immigration system is fair because people have a right of oral appeal.

Charles Clarke: We are ready to listen to my hon. Friend and many colleagues on both sides of the House who are concerned about the issue. As he knows, it is not addressed in the Bill, but it is certainly a matter of concern that he has raised with the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality and me. Our policy remains as set out in the document—there should not be oral appeals, but we acknowledge that the process gives rise to a good deal of concern among many colleagues, so we are ready to continue discussing it with an open mind to see how we can make progress.

David Winnick: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the fact that appeals are rarely successful if heard on the basis of papers? The oral appeal allows the sponsor to state the appellant's case through a representative while the Home Office puts the case of the entry clearance officer. Removing that appeal would undermine people's ability to visit close relatives. I hope that my right hon. Friend will not do what the Tories did and undermine the appeals system.

Charles Clarke: First, I confirm what I said a moment ago—we are ready to discuss the situation and listen to the points made by my hon. Friend and others. Secondly, in my opinion the solution to the problem lies in achieving better and more effective decision making at the initial level in the process.
	A number of complaints have been made to me by hon. Friends and others that our decision taking is not as accurate as it needs to be and does not take full account of all factors. It is important that we get a better level of co-operation than we have been able to achieve between the communities that we are discussing and the Home Office. All that is part of the same approach. I say again that our minds are not closed on the matter that my hon. Friend raises, although I am sceptical about some of the points made in that regard.

Patrick Hall: May I elaborate on the disquiet that I and others feel about the proposed withdrawal of appeal rights for overseas students and migrant workers, which could have a negative effect on the British economy? With regard to family visits, there is a need for great sensitivity towards different cultural groups in their understanding of the role of core family members. Will my right hon. Friend reinforce his determination to listen to these points and re-examine the matter in Committee?

Charles Clarke: As I said a moment ago, I shall deal with that point in a moment.

Sadiq Khan: Does my right hon. Friend agree that not only is there a problem with the quality of some of the decisions taken by entry clearance officers, but that some of the problems stem from the subjective tests applied? We need to ensure transparency and accountability in the decision making.

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend puts his point clearly. One of the problems with the whole system has been a lack of transparency and clarity, both for the country as a whole and for the individuals who go through the system. It is important to establish a much clearer system. That is one of the reasons for the points system that we propose for people who come to the UK to work and to study, which will attempt to be much clearer, in the way that my hon. Friend described, for people who are thinking of coming to the country so that they can be better dealt with. My hon. Friend is right about the importance of a clear, transparent system. That is the thrust of the five-year strategy.

Daniel Kawczynski: The Prime Minister has stated that he wants the number of failed asylum seekers deported to match the number of people coming in, yet in the first quarter of this year the number of new applications is still running at double that. Does the Home Secretary consider that target unrealistic?

Charles Clarke: No, I think that it is entirely attainable. It is based first, on reducing the number of people seeking asylum in Britain, and secondly, on increasing the number of people who are returned to their country of origin. I shall give one clear example. We have stated clearly to our colleagues in the rest of the European Union that we believe that it is important that the EU as a whole gets a return agreement during our presidency—that is, before the end of December this year—with Russia, Ukraine and Morocco. Those are not mainstream problem countries from our point of view, but they are significant nevertheless. There is a series of such moves that we are seeking to develop and I believe we will achieve the target that we have set.

Piara S Khabra: Is my right hon. Friend aware that entry clearance officers enjoy enormous powers of decision making and, to my knowledge, are not subject to any scrutiny by the Home Office? Will he reconsider the system of giving too much power to entry clearance officers, which cannot be challenged other than in an appeal in a court of law?

Charles Clarke: I understand what my hon. Friend is saying. It is true that the decisions taken are important for the people concerned. I do not accept, however, that there is no scrutiny by the Home Office more generally on the matter. In fact, there is a great deal of scrutiny of the way in which the process operates. As a result of that scrutiny we published the five-year approach that we set out last February, precisely to try and improve the quality of the work that is done. The new asylum process that we are setting out in the document and that some aspects of the Bill seek to take forward is designed to improve the quality of the work. I know, and my hon. Friend knows, that there are many cases where we have not done as well as we should, but our approach must be to improve, and that is what the Bill is about.

Michael Weir: rose—

Charles Clarke: I shall make some more progress, and then I may give way again.
	On the first of the four work streams—the rules for permanent settlement and appeals—clauses 1 to 3 and 9 are concerned with appeal arrangements for people in the UK who are refused further leave or whose leave is varied. The clauses replace the current system with a single appeal at the removal stage, which would deal with all aspects of the case. An exception is made for people who have previously been recognised as refugees in the UK but who we judge no longer need our protection because their circumstances or the position in their country of origin has changed. The provisions ensure that someone who was a refugee can appeal against a decision that he or she is no longer a refugee before we move to take removal action.
	Clauses 4 and 5 abolish appeals for work and study routes for those refused entry clearance overseas and those refused entry at a UK port or airport. That policy was set out clearly in the five-year strategy and was a manifesto commitment. However, I entirely understand the points made by my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry, South (Mr. Cunningham) and for Bedford (Patrick Hall). Major concerns have been expressed about student visas—more so than work visas—and we have to take those very seriously. My proposition is that appeal rights should be focused on asylum and family cases that raise fundamental issues. As I said, the introduction of the single points-based scheme will ensure that the rules for entering the UK to work or as a student are as clear, simple and transparent as they need to be.
	Since I became Home Secretary—coming, as some Members may recall, from the Department for Education and Skills—I have been acutely aware of universities' concerns about these matters, which I have discussed with them in a variety of ways. The changes that we have made will ensure a much more direct dialogue with the universities about the visa system that operates. Universities justifiably complained that we had an inflexible system in which it was very difficult for them to have any impact on the operation of the visa system as regards renewals and a whole series of issues that needed to be sorted out. We are trying to make progress in those areas. Their two fundamental concerns relate to the cost of visas and the question of appeals. It is important to bear in mind that, given that universities are bringing £3 billion a year in business into this country, it is not unreasonable for us to make a charge that meets the costs as they go through. The number of people on appeal is a very small proportion of the overall student body, but it makes the whole process for all students far slower and less effective than it would otherwise be.
	I therefore defend our proposals. Colleagues may want to make further points in Committee, but we have the right approach and that is how I intend to deal with the matter.

Patrick Hall: With regard to overseas students, I have come across cases in my constituency where entry clearance officers have directly gainsaid the judgment of a university offering a course. That is not right.

Charles Clarke: Serious issues have arisen in the university sector—or I should say more generally the overall education sector—regarding essentially bogus institutions that are a device for people to come into the country pretending to be students. Together with the Department for Education and Skills, we have taken strong steps to deal with that. I remain of the view that the way in which to deal with my hon. Friend's genuine concerns is to have a proper dialogue between the university sector and the Home Office about how to ensure that the visa system works in the most effective way.

Jim Cunningham: As my right hon. Friend knows, I have two universities in my constituency, but I am still unclear about his comments on the abolition of the appeals mechanism if a university has only a small number of students. I do not understand how that affects other conditions and arrangements that he wants to make with universities.

Charles Clarke: I am sorry that I was unclear. The reason for the proposals in the five-year strategy is that the appeal process is massively time consuming and expensive for the visa operational system. We want to make it as simple and straightforward as possible. We therefore included the points plan, which will make it easier for people to know—before they come to a university in Coventry or elsewhere—exactly where they stand. I believe that the proposals will lead to a far better service for the individual students at the universities that my hon. Friend represents and for universities to enable them to move more effectively.
	I plead guilty to the charge that the system for universities was too inflexible. It is necessary to achieve a better state of affairs, whereby my hon. Friend's concerns can be sorted out. However, I do not believe that the appeals system is central to that.

Vincent Cable: Will the Home Secretary explain the high error rate on student visa decisions? It is such that the Immigration Advisory Service claims that 60 per cent. of its cases are successful on appeal. The university of Sheffield argues that, in 90 per cent. of the cases that it brought, they were either successful or the refusal was withdrawn. Since the errors are so enormous, surely the appeals system should be preserved.

Charles Clarke: I do not recognise the figures that the hon. Gentleman cites. However, the most important way of addressing the appeals problem is to get a more accurate system of making initial decisions. The overall process that we have set out will achieve that in the ways that I have described.

Sadiq Khan: My understanding is that one reason for the success of appeals in student cases is that additional information is provided on appeal, which leads to the initial decision being overturned. However, the universities have expressed a concern about whether, if the same person decides on the prospective student's fresh application, there will be prejudice against that student given the black mark against his or her name.

Charles Clarke: I do not believe that such prejudice will exist, but the working party, to which I referred earlier, to establish the discussion between universities and the Home Office on those matters will deal with those specific points. Let me add another serious point, which relates to my hon. Friend's remarks. It is important that people who want to study here apply to come here in a timely way. There are tricky issues about late applications and the way in which they are tackled that relate to his point about information. I hope that we can reach a state of affairs whereby those decisions are taken properly.

David Davis: I understand what the Home Secretary is trying to achieve. Bogus colleges became a specific problem in the past couple of years. In the past year or so, the National Audit Office conducted a study of entry clearance and raised the question of the quality of decisions. Although Conservative Members are minded to accept the Home Secretary's arguments on appeals, the decision hinges strongly on improvement in quality. Will the right hon. Gentleman therefore undertake to take on board the proposals in the NAO report on the subject and inform an early sitting of the Standing Committee so that it can reach a judgment on the matter?

Charles Clarke: I give the undertakings for which the right hon. Gentleman asks to take the NAO proposals into account and to inform the Committee. However, I can go further: because of the importance of his point, which I tried to make earlier, I am prepared to say that if we do not improve the quality of decisions, the matter should be brought before the House to ascertain how we move forward.

Robert Smith: I emphasise the universities' concerns about the money that is brought in. However, from the perspective of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, universities play a vital role in the long-term future economic well-being of this country by bringing people here and exposing them to our culture and our way of doing business. That pays long-term dividends when those people go back to be managers and decision makers in their countries. It is therefore vital that we have a system that ensures that as many people as possible get here as overseas students. To that end, when the Home Secretary says that he wants to make the system more transparent, efficient and effective, surely he can maintain the appeals procedure. If it is more transparent, effective and efficient, there will be fewer appeals.

Charles Clarke: I do not want to be dismissive or rude, but the general point is self-evident. It is critical for the economy that large numbers of people continue to want to study in this country in a variety of ways. It is important for the foreign policy reasons that the hon. Gentleman suggests as well as for economic reasons. Most importantly, however, British educational institutions, particularly the universities, must remain an attractive proposition—in what is, incidentally, a highly competitive marketplace—for people seeking to come to this country. Furthermore, so far as the Home Office is concerned, it is important that we deal with the applications of people coming to this country in the most effective and efficient way possible, which is what we are doing in these provisions.

Chris Mullin: Is it not the case that a significant number of the students from other countries who are accepted by British universities do not show up, and that others who do show up disappear rather quickly afterwards? Has it not also been the case, at least in the recent past, that some universities are in denial about this problem?

Charles Clarke: I would not be anything like as vicious and sharp in my use of language as my hon. Friend, but he accurately describes the state of affairs. The big issue involves a change of culture that runs right through the whole five-year strategy. We need to understand that responsibility for the migration and asylum system in this country is a matter not only for the Home Office and its agencies but for those who benefit from that migration. We are trying to form a partnership with the universities so that everyone can acknowledge their responsibilities in regard to dealing with the problem. I accept my hon. Friend's point, and I have set out what we are trying to achieve.

Keith Vaz: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke: My hon. Friend is always immensely persuasive, so, unfortunately, I shall give way.

Keith Vaz: I am most grateful to the Home Secretary for his generosity. I thought that he said something very useful this afternoon—[Laughter.] Actually, he said many useful things, but one in particular was his expression of willingness to meet representatives of the universities. Will he meet a delegation of university vice-chancellors to talk about the partnership that could be created to deal with the issue of abuse? Will he ensure that either the Minister with responsibility for entry clearance or the Foreign Secretary are also present at that meeting, because these decisions are taken at posts abroad?

Charles Clarke: Yes, I can give my hon. Friend the commitment that he requests. Actually, a number of such meetings have been held already, between universities and officials and Ministers from the Home Office, and Foreign Office Ministers. This is an important dialogue, because these matters involve a change of culture. We shall have to work hard to change the Home Office culture, but everyone else will have to change as well.
	Now I really must make some progress. On the first pillar, clauses 42 to 44 provide a power to prescribe procedures to be followed and fees to be paid when making particular applications under the immigration rules. The purpose of that is that, in addition to improving the management of the current system, these provisions will support the implementation of the new points-based system for managed migration. On the new asylum process and refugee integration, clause 38 amends the statutory framework creating the refugee integration loan to reflect the change in policy announced in the five-year strategy granting refugees an initial five years' leave to remain.
	The body of the Bill addresses two aspects of what I have described as the "third workstream". A key provision in the Bill will effectively tackle illegal working by punishing those who use workers who are not legally allowed to seek paid employment in the UK. Clauses 11 to 20 create a new civil penalty for employers of illegal workers and set out how the scheme will work. In particular, clauses 11 and 12 set out the circumstances in which a penalty may be issued to an employer found to be using illegal workers, the requirements that employers must fulfil to be able to prove that they have taken reasonable steps to assure themselves that employees or prospective employees are entitled to work in the UK, and the grounds on which an employer can object to the issue of a civil penalty.
	Clause 15 requires a code of practice to be issued covering the criteria to be used in determining whether a penalty should be issued, and the amount. The maximum amount to be paid per employee would be £2,000. Clause 17 creates a new criminal offence of employing a person knowing that they are not legally entitled to work in the UK. It provides that the maximum penalty for conviction following indictment is two years' imprisonment and/or a fine. It is critically important that we drive out those illegal employers who keep people here, often in the most appalling conditions, and we must ensure that we deal with them in the most effective way. These measures are designed to achieve just that.

David Davis: Members on both sides of the House will agree with the Home Secretary's last comment about dealing with "illegal employers", if that is the right phrase. I am concerned, however, about how replacing a criminal instrument with a maximum fine of £5,000, which is not currently used—I think that the maximum fine given so far is £2,050, with a civil fine of £2,000—will help. One of the problems in this area seems to be that the current law is not applied in its full force.

Charles Clarke: Certainly, I am happy to address that point in Committee. The thinking behind the proposal, however, is that we have had great success through applying precisely that kind of measure to carriers of illegal migrants, as it forces them to think carefully about how they operate. Were the right hon. Gentleman to argue that we do not need that because the criminal measure is more effective, of course I would listen. But the measures that we have introduced so far, for other such abuses, have been the most effective response.
	The Bill makes several amendments to existing legislation to facilitate the enforcement and transparency of the immigration and asylum systems and to build the e-borders framework that I described. Clause 23 brings together the provisions on detention and examination of passports and other documents that might be produced by a passenger, and provides the same conditions to govern detention and examination for all documents. It allows immigration officers to require passengers who present biometrically-enabled travel documents to provide biometric information such as fingerprints, to allow their identity to be checked against the documents. That is necessary to support the global roll-out of fingerprinting visa applicants by 2008.
	Clause 24 reduces the notice period given to asylum seekers and their families who cannot be fingerprinted on application, which supports the new asylum model by ensuring that claims are considered more swiftly. Clauses 26 to 34 are necessary to enable the capture of passenger, crew and freight details in advance of travel. That will assist border agencies, such as the immigration service, police service and Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, to detect known specific targets or to identify individuals whose travel behaviour indicates that they might be of interest to one or more of the border agencies. Capturing data in advance also maximises the time available to determine and deploy the most appropriate intervention action—a key component of the type of proactive, intelligence-led operation that we are trying to address. The sharing of data is essential to provide a joined-up approach to border management. It optimises the potential to identify those individuals who present a threat to the UK through their involvement in activities such as terrorism, drug smuggling and illegal migration. It also enables the border agencies to mount an appropriate, co-ordinated and proportionate response.
	Clauses 26 to 28 and 30 provide for the immigration service, the police and Revenue and Customs to acquire that kind of data, too. The detail of what might be requested will be set out in secondary legislation. Clauses 31, 32 and 34 cover whom the information must or may be shared with, and the purposes for which the information may be shared, and introduce a new statutory duty of co-operation providing for information obtained or held by the border agencies in the course of their functions to be properly shared.
	On detention removals, clause 39 puts Her Majesty's inspector of prisons' voluntary oversight of short-term holding facilities and escorts on to a statutory footing, and brings it into line with the oversight exercise in respect of immigration removal centres. Clause 40 provides that where a person has breached the conditions of limited leave, or has obtained leave to remain by deception, leave is invalidated when he is served with a decision to remove him from the United Kingdom.

Neil Gerrard: The provisions to extend the competence of the prisons inspector are welcomed. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that all detention facilities in the United Kingdom in which asylum seekers or failed asylum seekers might be held will be covered, as we are concerned not just about failed asylum seekers but about those in facilities such as Oakington whose asylum claims have not yet been determined?

Charles Clarke: Certainly, that is the intention. Alerted by my hon. Friend's question, I shall double-check that the wording of the Bill meets his point, but I think that it permits us to deal with the issue in precisely the way that he describes. The reason for that is simple. Because of the concerns that are expressed, it is important for an independent inspectorate to examine conditions across the range of facilities.
	I believe that the Government have already made great strides in improving the asylum and migration systems. We have reduced the number of asylum applications. We have speeded up processing, and strengthened our controls across the channel. We have introduced measures to combat abuse, and especially to deal with bogus college and marriage applications. Removals remain very difficult, often for reasons outside our direct control. The vast majority of failed asylum seekers have no documents, and their countries will not accept them back unless we can prove their nationalities, but we are reaching more and more agreements with source countries to deal with that, and even small numbers of removals to those countries can have a dramatic effect on new abusive applications.

Lynne Jones: Clause 37 deals with the provision of accommodation under section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. Having made the welcome decision to abolish vouchers for asylum seekers on the grounds of their lack of flexibility and vulnerability to black market activities, the Government now seem to be introducing them again for failed asylum seekers who cannot be returned home. For various reasons, people from Iraq or Congo may not be able to travel back safely, or it may be unsafe for them to return. Since April, such individuals have been refused cash and given £35 food vouchers. How can that help people who are required to travel to the obligatory reporting centres? How are families with children to purchase nappies? How are women to purchase sanitary items? Will my right hon. Friend do something about it?

Charles Clarke: I am certainly prepared to consider the point in Committee, but I do not accept my hon. Friend's description of the impact of clause 37.

Edward Miliband: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Charles Clarke: No. I am about to finish my speech.
	The challenge now is for us to build on those successes, and to create a robust system that delivers the migration that we need and want and does not tolerate abuse. We intend to demonstrate publicly and clearly that that can be done. I believe that the five-year strategy and the Bill that implements its legislative aspects provide the necessary basis, and I commend the Bill to the House.

David Davis: Let me make it clear at the outset that the official Opposition support the main thrust of the Bill, which is the fourth immigration Bill that the Government have presented. I had hoped to be able to go further. I had hoped to be able to welcome the long overdue introduction of a new points system for immigrants—something that we have advocated for some time—but there is not much sign of that in the Bill. If I understood the Home Secretary correctly, the Government plan to introduce such a system through secondary legislation, or perhaps through later primary legislation.

Charles Clarke: It will depend on administrative changes and also changes in the immigration rules, which involve secondary legislation.

David Davis: As I thought, it will be done through secondary legislation. I believe that the operation of the immigration strategy will depend greatly on the detail of that legislation.
	I had also hoped to be able to welcome long overdue measures to strengthen security at borders, following the hastily added sixth manifesto pledge promising to keep Britain's borders protected. Notwithstanding the Home Secretary's comments, there is little in the Bill to meet that promise. Even after it comes into force, two thirds of Britain's ports will lack the 24-hour security that would genuinely help us to keep track of the number of people coming into our country.
	The Home Secretary spoke at length about his five-year strategy. I had hoped that the Government had learnt the lessons of recent years, and decided to be open and honest with the people on this important subject. Yet last week, the Government finally confirmed what had been rumoured, and denied by them, for so long: that there may be as many as 570,000 illegal immigrants living in Britain today. We still do not know whether that figure includes dependants. What we do know is that it includes only those who registered in the 2001 census—not necessarily a very likely activity for someone trying to avoid the law. So in all probability, the 570,000 figure is an underestimate.
	But what makes this revelation more damaging is the Government apparently misleading the public about the extent of the problem in the run-up to the general election. Just three months ago, in the throes of the election campaign, the Prime Minister said that it was "impossible" to know how many people might be living illegally in the country. He added,
	"I don't think there's any point in speculating".
	That was despite having commissioned an estimate of illegal immigrant numbers the previous year. In the same month—April of this year—and again during the throes of the election campaign, the Home Secretary backed up the Prime Minister. He said that
	"There are no official estimates and any estimates would be highly speculative."
	Dutifully, a former Immigration Minister said that the Government knew the 570,000 figure to be "grossly inaccurate". Now, his successor claims that the Government published it last year, which is clearly not true; in fact, the Government suppressed it in Professor Salt's document of last year. The Minister in question obviously was not paying attention to what his colleagues said in the middle of the election campaign.
	At the very least, the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the former and current Immigration Ministers owe the British people an apology for misleading them when they had the chance to pass judgment at the ballot box. Not for the first time, this Government have some serious questions to answer about the way in which they respond to genuine public concern about asylum and immigration.

Neil Gerrard: The right hon. Gentleman suggests that 570,000 people were here illegally, according to the 2001 census. Would he like to hazard a guess as to how many of them were here before 1997?

David Davis: I will leave hazarding a guess to the Home Secretary, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind. The simple truth is that we have been asking for these numbers for some time, and we are not the only ones: so have several public bodies. For a very long time, the Home Secretary, his predecessor and his predecessor's Ministers all denied that it was even possible to assess such numbers—and at a time when the Prime Minister had actually summoned those numbers from the Home Office. So the hon. Gentleman has not got much to go on in this regard.
	Last year, this approach to policy and its public handling played a part in the resignation of two Home Office Ministers. By now, the Government should have learned the lessons of those events, but the latest revelations from the Home Office have a ring of déjà vu. It would be more than generous to the men concerned to accept that they genuinely had no idea about the true figure on the numerous occasions in the past that they had denied it. But ignorance of such an important fact should be no defence; it merely confirms people's suspicions that this Government have let the immigration and asylum system run out of control, and are clueless as to how to put it right. [Interruption.] The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality says from a sedentary position, "Go read the documents." He should spend a little while reading last year's newspapers, which would tell him a bit about this issue.
	Time and again, the Government's left hand has not known what their right hand was doing. First, we had the chaos of the eastern European immigrants, who unveiled the breakdown in relations between the head office of the Home Office and the immigration and nationality directorate. A whistleblower revealed that immigrants from eastern Europe were being waved into Britain without proper checks. The then Immigration Minister first denied that it had happened—until it was proven to be true. Then, she blamed junior civil servants—until it turned out to be the work of senior officials, with ministerial acquiescence. Next, she said that such cases were rare and untypical—until they were shown to be widespread. Then, the whistleblower was sacked, but the Minister stayed.
	Secondly, we had the scandal of the migrant scams in Romania and Bulgaria, which were brought to light by our consul in Bucharest. This incident revealed a complete lack of communication between the Home Office and the Foreign Office. Our consul warned the Government that groups in Romania and Bulgaria were making fraudulent claims, yet Home Office officials granted such people visas anyway, knowing their claims to be false. Again, the consul was sacked, the Minister stayed. The Minister was finally forced to go, but only because of the utter chaos and lack of communication in the Home Office itself. She claimed not to know of any of these scams; it turned out that she had been warned a year before by her own Home Office colleague. If ordinary people behaved like that in their daily jobs, they would be sacked straight away—and rightly so. Within this Government, however, there is no such sanction: if a Minister fails, cover it up; if that fails, blame someone else; only if that fails will a Minister give in and go. In the light of the Government's capacity for incompetence and irresponsibility, it is little wonder that people hold politicians in such low regard.
	While we are talking about numbers, let us consider what the Government promised.

Keith Vaz: rose—

David Davis: I will give way in a moment.
	What did the Government promise about the number of immigrants from the new EU accession countries who could apply to live in Britain? They said that there would be between 5,000 and 13,000 such immigrants in a whole year, but there turned out to be 16,000 in one month—nearly 200,000 a year. What was the excuse when Ministers had to face the figures? Well, we were told, more than a third of them were living here already— illegally. It is hard to find words to describe their incompetence. On the subject of incompetence, I give way to the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz).

Keith Vaz: I am most grateful to the shadow Home Secretary for giving way. Does he regret the hysteria that he generated at the time of the enlargement of the European Union on 1 May last year, when it was claimed that all these eastern European immigrants were going to come into this country to go on benefits and take everybody's jobs? In fact, what happened is that those people contributed to the British economy, they behaved perfectly lawfully and the registration scheme worked. Does he regret the hysteria that he personally stirred up on that issue?

David Davis: Once again we see the Government's favourite mechanism, which is to blame the messenger. Only this Government would think that telling the truth is whipping up hysteria and only this particular former Minister for Europe would think that telling the truth about the real number of migrants is whipping up hysteria—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman shouts from a sedentary position that we were wrong. The Government's estimate was that there would be 5,000 to 13,000 such people in a year. Does he deny that? I gladly give way for him to deny it.

Keith Vaz: Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman that he should take great care about playing with statistics on the subject of immigration. That just fuels prejudice in our society. He should be ashamed of himself.

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman did not answer. He would not tell us whether the figure was 5,000 to 13,000, yet even the Home Secretary at the time said that the 13,000 figure was not his estimate, but the Home Office's. That was an interesting distancing exercise. The raw truth is that more than 190,000 such people have come here in one year. If the hon. Gentleman cannot cope with the truth, that is his problem rather than anyone else's. The simple truth is that large numbers of immigrants have come into this country and the Government have to make a judgment in relation to their points scheme about how many should be coming here on various skill and income levels. How can they possibly make that judgment if they confuse themselves by mistaking 192,000 people for 5,000 people?

Keith Vaz: I thought that the Conservative party was in favour of the enlargement of the EU and in favour of allowing people from the 10 countries to come here. What is the problem with allowing members of the public from Poland, the Czech Republic and other new member states to come to this country to work lawfully and legally by registering under the scheme? What is the right hon. Gentleman's problem?

David Davis: Germany was in favour of enlargement, as were Denmark and Finland, but they all had intelligent transitional schemes that allowed them to manage the process. They took a sensible attitude towards the enlargement of the EU. The hon. Gentleman ought to know better, but this country did not and we have ended up having nearly 200,000 people come here. It was unplanned and we have yet to see whether it was a good or bad thing.
	Every two years since the Government have been in office, we have had a big announcement followed by a failure. In 1997, the promise was a swift and fair asylum system. The reality is that it is not fair to anyone—not to genuine refugees, lumped in with the fraudsters and forced to plead their case; not to immigrants who spend their life savings paying people smugglers for the chance to come to Britain; and not to opposition party members of Zimbabwe who are caught up in this Government's public relations offensive and face torture or worse if they are sent back.
	Again, in 1997, the Prime Minister promised to achieve firm control of immigration, but the reality is that annual net immigration into the UK tripled. Another promise was made in 1999—that we would have a fairer, faster and firmer asylum system. The reality was that, a few years later, the number of asylum applications in one year passed 100,000 for the first time in our history.
	Two years on, in 2001, the promise was to remove more failed asylum seekers from Britain. The result was that a smaller proportion is removed now than was the case when this Government came to office.
	In 2003, the Government promised to
	"derail the gravy train of legal aid",
	but the result is that the legal aid budget for asylum and immigration has soared by 682 per cent.—from £26 million to £204 million. This year—election year—the shortest lived announcement of all was made. While the Prime Minister was quickly adding his sixth election pledge and promising to get a grip on immigration, almost simultaneously the Home Secretary was telling a private meeting of Labour supporters:
	"We want more migration, more people coming to study and to work. We want more people coming to look for refuge."
	One statement or the other is true: both of them cannot be. We are locked in a two-year cycle of big announcements, bold promises and botched policies.

Patrick Hall: About 14 minutes ago, the right hon. Gentleman said that he supported the Bill—and therefore the Government, on this issue—but since then he has not mentioned it. He has been campaigning for something, although I cannot imagine what. Will he return to the subject of the debate and explain why he supports the Bill? If he has any improvements to propose, will he explain what they are?

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman forgets that this is a Second Reading debate. I said that I supported the Bill, but that it is too little, too late. The Opposition have been asking for some of the measures contained in the Bill, and for the other measures that would derive from it, for some time. However, the problem over and over again has been that this Government legislate and then nothing happens. Following a headline-grabbing initiative with inaction is not a very good policy premise. That is my point, and I shall go on making it throughout the debate.
	I turn now to the consequences of uncontrolled immigration. I agree with the Home Secretary that controlled immigration has a proper and useful function. Managed migration contributes to our economy and culture, and to many aspects of British society, but uncontrolled immigration can have the opposite effect. That is the concern that I want to raise today.
	The consequences of uncontrolled immigration for the everyday lives of ordinary people are there for all to see. Here in London, there are pressures on housing. That housing stress has led to the Government crippling the right to buy, with the result that many people can no longer afford to buy the houses that they live in.

Edward Miliband: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis: In a moment.
	Across the country, vital local services are under increasing pressure as people find access to health care and schooling more difficult because more people are fighting over fewer places. The Government are very quick to remind us, when it suits them, that Britain is still at high risk from terrorism, but the public have little faith in the very system that is supposed to control who enters our country and who leaves it.

Charles Clarke: The right hon. Gentleman has raised many issues, but has not yet discussed the Bill. I have a direct question for him: does he intend to table an amendment to introduce an annual quota for immigration that would be set by this House? That was proposed by the Conservatives during the election campaign. Will he table such an amendment, if that is what he believes in?

David Davis: Certainly, if the Home Secretary invites me to and gives sufficient time in Committee. It is a very good idea, and I shall return to the matter of the quota in a moment. I shall also return to the question of how the points system that he proposes will work—if we ever see it.

Edward Miliband: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis: No.
	Across Britain, taxpayers are footing the bill for the Government's failure. When they came to power, the budget for the immigration and nationality directorate was £212 million a year. It is now more than £1.7 billion. That money could pay for 80,000 extra nurses, 70,000 extra teachers, and 60,000 extra police. Ordinary people are literally paying the price for this Government's asylum failure.
	I can understand why Ministers wanted to cover up the extent of the problem during the election campaign. However, I cannot understand why they let the problem get so bad in the first place. There has been no shortage of activity, but there has been a shortage of results. Six years ago, the House debated phase 1 of the Government's asylum policy—the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. It abolished the so-called white list, and the number of applications shot up to more than 100,000 a year—the highest in Europe. So three years ago, phase 2 of the Government's policy reintroduced the white list. By that time, the UK was well on the way to receiving the second highest number of asylum applications in the world.
	Last year, we passed what the then Home Secretary described as the final phase of asylum reform—the plan to bring speed and finality to the appeals and removals process. The result is that the number of removals has fallen in five of the last six quarters. If that was the final phase, this Bill appears to be an afterthought.

Edward Miliband: We all acknowledge the problems of housing, education and health that the right hon. Gentleman mentions, but it is a grotesque caricature to suggest that they are the result of asylum and immigration. The asylum budget consumes 0.3 per cent. of public expenditure. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to lead the major Opposition party in this House, he must put his claims in context.

David Davis: Given the hon. Gentleman's background, I am interested to hear that he thinks that £2 billion is not much, but with a billion here and a billion there one is soon talking about real money.
	The Government and their supporters say that they take the issue seriously and are very concerned about it. But then what happens? To give one example, London is a housing stress area. Some 60 per cent. of immigrants and asylum seekers coming to this country come to London, so several hundred thousand people add to the housing demand in the city. I do not pretend that it is an easy problem to solve, but the Government do not even recognise the problem. That is the problem that we face, and we have to make them think about it.
	The Secretary of State wanted me to talk about the Bill, so I shall do so. It promises new sanctions against people employing illegal immigrants. We welcome that. The exploitation that has developed in some sectors of our economy in recent years is a disgrace to a civilised society. We would all agree with that. However, sanctions are already available: they just have not been used. There have been only 24 prosecutions in the past seven years under the legislation introduced in 1996, just before the Government came into power. And that is against the backdrop of a group of Chinese dying in the back of a van in Dover and the deaths in Morecambe bay. That is a disgrace. There is no other word for it. I asked the Home Secretary—deliberately, because I want to be helpful on this point—whether he thought that more legislation would help, and he said that it was like the legislation that had been used before. The simple question is why the Government have not used that other legislation. That is what Governments are responsible for and what they are there to do.
	The Bill promises new powers to track people entering the country, but it does nothing to address the fact that, as I said earlier, 11 out of 35 British ports are manned with security or immigration officials 24 hours a day and the others are not. The Bill contains provisions to allow immigration officers to verify someone's identity, using the Government's new favourite thing—biometrics. But as we saw in the ID cards debate, that technology is far from foolproof and remains open to fraud. It is a partial solution, not a panacea. The Bill also contains proposals to change the right of appeal. As I said to the Home Secretary, we shall look at those proposals in detail to check that they strike the right balance between an individual's rights and the needs of effective administration. We will look carefully at how effective the initial decisions procedure is in making that judgment, and I hope that the Home Secretary will meet his undertaking to take on board the National Audit Office proposals.
	The Bill is significant not for what it contains but for what it does not contain. At the election, the Opposition set out a clear plan for controlling the number of people coming into Britain and as usual the Government began by ridiculing it, then they attacked it and then they adopted it.

Edward Miliband: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis: No, not at the moment.
	Now, the Government have watered down our plan. We said that we would adopt a points-based system for immigration, as they do in Australia. That is the biggest single thing that the Government could do to get a grip on the immigration system, while giving priority to people with the skills that Britain needs. We also promised to let Parliament put a limit on the number of people coming to the UK each year. That would ensure that we balanced the needs of Britain—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband) carries on shouting from a sedentary position, I shall not give way to him—he can make up his mind.
	Our system would ensure that we balanced the needs of Britain's economy with the needs of the population as a whole. The Government agree with the first, but not with the second; they want the points, but not the limit. A points system with no limit is futile. How will it work? If someone gets 100 points, will they be allowed in? If someone gets 90 points, will they be allowed in? If someone gets 60, 50 or 30 points, will they be allowed in? Where does it end? If there is a cut-off point there is a de facto limit. If not, there is no point to the system.

Mark Fisher: The shadow Home Secretary is making an interesting point, but he cannot have it both ways. He cannot say that we should have a quota and not put a figure on it. What is his limit? What does he consider to be the correct figure?

David Davis: The whole point is that Parliament would make that decision each year on the basis of a number of things, just as Australia does. The decision would be based on information about skills shortages and pressures on housing or public services. Without such information a decision cannot be made. It is perfectly possible for the Government to come up with a proposal—it would be easy—but it depends on information. Facts first, decision second.

Edward Miliband: rose—

Mark Fisher: rose—

David Davis: I will give way to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher) once more.

Mark Fisher: The shadow Home Secretary makes a perfectly fair point but all those factors are in the public domain; they are known to him, as they are to the press and to the Home Secretary, at least in ball-park figures. The right hon. Gentleman is in a position to say what he thinks the limit should be when all the factors that he correctly enumerates are taken into account. What sort of figure is he talking about?

David Davis: I am afraid that the facts are not in the   public domain. In Australia, there are regular consultations between the national and provincial Governments on such information—where there are skills shortages and pressures on housing and public services. I do not know about such matters. We need to know about them not just for the present but for the year ahead. It is a perfectly practical, sensible and easy thing to understand, but the data are not available and I do not intend to make guesses about information that is not available.

Adrian Bailey: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Edward Miliband: rose—

David Davis: As the hon. Member for Doncaster, North has been getting so excited, I will give way to him—[Interruption.]—he does not have to bow; it is not a requirement of the House.

Edward Miliband: I was not actually bowing to the right hon. Gentleman but to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	I take what the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) says about a limit, but I disagree with him about imposing an annual limit and I shall briefly tell him why. Setting an annual limit is a dirigiste system where the state decides on the number of people to be let in each year. What the Government are proposing is a system led by employers, which is flexible and can respond to the needs they identify. That is why he is wrong to try to set an annual limit.

David Davis: If the hon. Gentleman's economics is up to it, he will recognise that employers do not meet all the costs of the pressures on housing, public services and so on, so their decisions might not necessarily be right for society as a whole. That is why the Government occasionally have to impose restraints. I am sorry to give him lectures on how immigration policy is supposed to work in theory, but he asked for it.

Adrian Bailey: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

David Davis: No, I must make some progress.
	What is the point of the system if there is no limit? Once again, the Government's policy seems half-baked. I hope that the Home Secretary, or the Minister when he winds up the debate, will tell us when the points system will be brought in, whether we shall have a chance to debate in full how it should work and how many points he thinks someone should have before being allowed into Britain, and how that will work. We need to know whether there will be a cut-off, and therefore a de facto limit. It must not be another example of the Government promising one thing before an election but doing something else after it. The Government were elected on a manifesto that promised to introduce the scheme. I hope that they will go ahead with it quickly, but I also urge the Home Secretary to think seriously about how they will limit the number of people coming into Britain—or is he simply going to recognise that there will be no limit, and will he tell the British people so if that is the case?
	We cannot continue to have an open-ended immigration policy, driven by the need to prop up key areas of our economy—by stripping other countries, incidentally, of people with important skills. At the end of the day we must focus on improving our own skills base so that we no longer have to rely on the immigration lottery. A responsible Government would put a limit on immigration. The consequences of an uncontrolled, unlimited immigration system are potentially too great. It is the glaring hole in the middle of the Bill and it is the glaring hole at the heart of the Government's five-year strategy.
	Over the past two weeks we have witnessed the Government trying to meet the debts that they ran up during the election campaign. First we had the unnecessary plan to limit freedom of speech by criminalising people who question religious belief—a debt that they promised to Labour voters in marginal seats. Then we had their illiberal Identity Cards Bill, to change for ever the balance of the relationship between the citizen and the state—a price they paid for playing political games before the election. Today we have a Bill that genuinely addresses an issue of serious public concern, yet it contains very little that will repay the faith that the people placed in the Government on 5 May. On that day, the people gave the Government one last chance. They believed that they would take their concerns seriously. They believed what they said about getting the system under control. They trusted them to get the job done. For that to happen, we need a sea change in the way that the Government approach theissue. We must break the two-year cycle of announcement, headline and failure; break the complacent approach of a Home Office characterised by chaotic management and administrative failure; and break the web of distortions and half-truths that seems to surround this important issue. If, over the coming years, the Government prove capable of doing that and taking the tough decisions necessary, they will have our support. If not, the debt that they owe the British public will be called in. Then no amount of spin and cover-up will be able to hide the truth that they have failed in a basic duty of any Government—that of securing our borders, protecting our communities and keeping our country safe.

Mark Fisher: The Government have introduced several Bills on immigration and asylum since 1999. This Bill has several aspects that are very welcome, notably measures to control the unscrupulous and thoroughly irresponsible employers who have exploited immigrant workers. I welcome those aspects of the Bill and commend the Home Secretary for them.
	I want today to address the asylum aspects of the Bill, not in the terms that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) has just referred to, but looked at from the point of view of fulfilling our international obligations, which I think he recognises are serious.
	Each of the Bills the Government have introduced since 1999 has in various ways curtailed the rights and protections of those who turn to Britain for asylum because their life and liberties are threatened in their own country. Ministers, including this Home Secretary, are committed to our living up to our international obligations and I recognise and believe that they are honourable in those commitments. However, too many aspects of the policy as displayed by those immigration Bills have been driven not by a sense of responsibility to our international obligations but by what the Government see, I think wrongly, as the British public's impatience with those seeking asylum, and too much by the popular press. The policy is rightly hostile to those who apply for asylum when what they actually want is to come to this country as economic migrants and who mislead and abuse the asylum system, but it is also hostile to genuine refugees or those who are seeking asylum because of the horror that they face at home.

David Davis: The hon. Gentleman knows that I am agreat admirer of him and his parliamentary performances. May I put a difficult question to him? One of the things that concerns me about the way our asylum system works is not just the numbers, but who actually ends up claiming asylum in Britain. About 60 per cent. of the people who claim asylum are young men—a disproportionate number—and the indications are that the filter applied is whether people can find $10,000 to pay the Chinese people traffickers to get to this country. Does he accept that the way we operate at the moment seems to encourage people traffickers and not to get the right people to come here?

Mark Fisher: The right hon. Gentleman is right to say that that is a problem, but I do not see anything in the Government's policy that encourages such things—far from it. He cannot seriously say that Ministers are sympathetic to or encourage that sort of behaviour. Indeed, the Government have taken good steps in many respects to crack down on that problem, although he has a fair point when he says that we still do not have proper 24-hour controls at even the major ports of entry, and the Government ought to look much more rigorously at that issue.
	The expression "illegal asylum seeker" is meaningless. No asylum seeker is illegal, but it is difficult to distinguish the misleading and erroneous asylum seeker, who should be properly described as an economic migrant—a perfectly respectable thing to be, but distinct from an asylum seeker—from those who are genuinely in fear of their lives. It is not easy to distinguish between the two. The only way that we can do so is by using the tribunal and adjudication system and, again, the Bills that we have introduced over the past four years—and, indeed, this Bill—turn the ratchet on that system, particularly on the appeals mechanism, and make it more likely that we will err on the side of scepticism. Thus people with good claims and good reason to be in fear of their lives and their liberty in their country of origin are being turned away. I do not think that that is what the Government intend, but that is the effect of those four Bills, and this Bill may inadvertently add to that because the context in which the adjudicators work is hostile to asylum seekers.
	Let us consider the context in which we are debating the Bill and the financial support that we give to asylum seekers. We recognise that, until we have adjudicated on their cases, they are serious and genuinely in fear of their lives. Can we honestly say that providing £37 a week is the right way to treat a human being? Is that dignified? Is it right to ask them to live on that amount while we make up our minds?

Greg Mulholland: Let me share with the House a case from my constituency. One of my constituents is married to a British woman while still claiming asylum. She runs a takeaway business, which is, of course, their livelihood. They choose to claim nothing in benefits. Yet, under the current system, if he steps into that takeaway, which is owned by his wife, he can be deported. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that is a fair and just way to treat refugees in this country; or does he think it is time the Government changed the legislation and addressed the biggest gap in the Bill, which is that asylum seekers are not allowed to have the dignity of working in this country?

Mark Fisher: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. The attitude towards employment is wholly unsatisfactory and makes the system much more expensive. Many people seeking asylum have skills and would like to work temporarily. That would reduce the cost to the Government and, perversely, it would mean that the Government could track those people more easily. Nothing is more conducive to losing an asylum seeker in the system than forcing them into illegal work by proposing the ludicrous payment of £37 a week. No Member of the House could support themselves on £37 a week.
	Additionally, we must consider the quality of housing supplied by the National Asylum Support Service. If the Home Secretary is serious about his responsibilities, he should get NASS to look again at the landlords used and the quality of housing provided. Yet again this winter we will see NASS houses that are damp, cold and frankly a disgrace. We turn our eyes from that because of the larger issue of the number of asylum seekers, but we should be ashamed of the way in which we treat people while we make up our minds. They have not been found guilty—they are not guilty of anything, anyway. They have come to ask for our protection and to seek asylum here, but the way in which we treat them is not good.
	The Home Secretary needs to lean heavily on NASS and ensure that the system improves considerably. Work is one aspect of the problem, so we should seriously examine the practice of countries that allow asylum seekers to work temporarily while their claims are considered. The Government might well find thatthere are advantages all round—and few disadvantages—to allowing that. Young men from Kurdish Iraq in particular are skilled, hard-working and determined and they have great resources, but they are sitting idle and frustrated while trying to survive on £37 a week. This daft policy does nothing for them or for us and actually encourages them to work illegally or disappear from the system. The hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (Greg Mulholland) is quite right to say that the Government should look at the situation again.
	The other aspect of the Bill about which I am concerned is the question of the adjudication and the tribunal system because the Bill marginally turns the ratchet on that once again. The present system is hugely unsatisfactory. Those who act as adjudicators are, to my knowledge, decent and hard-working people doing a difficult job. However, they are being asked to make judgments about the credibility of the evidence put before them on matters about which they have absolutely no experience. They are asked to decide, on the basis of language, whether a person genuinely comes from a specific part of Somalia. I suspect that all hon. Members have read adjudicators' reports on applicants. The adjudicators simply make arbitrary decisions in many cases by saying, "I don't believe this person comes from this particular Somali tribe." Although the adjudicators have no basis on which to make such an assumption, the decision is a matter of life and death for the applicants.
	The appeal system is now such a high hurdle to get over that it is inevitable that we are turning away people with genuine cause to fear for their lives. We need to look again at the advice available to adjudicators and the quality and specificity of Foreign Office reports because they are often general about the theatres from which refugees come. The judgments are made difficult because there are distinctions between different cities in different regions—and indeed, different parts of cities—and because of the divisions and tensions inside those cities. The way the system works at present is not fair to adjudicators and certainly not fair to refugees. Of course, adjudicators work under pressure from the media and, regrettably, the Government, but all the pressure is towards cutting the figures. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden played a part in setting the general mood of being appalled by the size of the figures. That has put such a pressure on the adjudicators and the system that there is a desire and tendency to keep the figures down.

David Davis: I have a single point to make in response to the hon. Gentleman's suggestion—I shall not call it an accusation. Last year, his Government tried to remove appeal rights altogether—the so-called ouster clause. My party, in conjunction with the Liberal party, blocked that in the Lords and said that we had to have an appeal process, not just because of the importance of the process in its own right, but because it maintained pressure on the rest of the system to get it right. The fact that there can be an appeal ensures that the adjudicators are, as it were, kept honest. That was not playing to any gallery or to the 250,000 failed asylum seekers who are still here. It was playing to the point of simple justice and simple proper treatment in a proper process.

Mark Fisher: Although I am getting comments from my hon. Friends, I accept that point. These are not easy matters and we do not help the quality of debate by flipping accusations across the Chamber. We are more likely to come to decisions that will benefit our country and, in particular, those seeking asylum if we do not throw about accusations relating to good faith or otherwise, either inside our parties or across the Floor of the House. A debate such as this does not respond well to party political point scoring.
	The other mess relating to the tribunal and appeal system becomes apparent when people are finally refused—a point to which my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Lynne Jones) alluded. When people are refused after appeal—as I said, the system is sometimes deeply flawed—they get a letter withdrawing their access to NASS and telling them that they will be evicted from their house the following week. They have no visible means of support. Clearly, the purpose behind that is to put pressure on them to deport themselves voluntarily. That is a disingenuous policy. The Government know full well that they are not going to deport them—or at least they are certainly not in a hurry to do so—because the countries from which they have come are not safe and they cannot send them back, yet they cut off their means of survival. That is an act of great cynicism. Those people are left dangling. It suits the Government because they can say, "We've rejected them. They ought to go," but they know full well that they have nowhere to go to.
	My hon. Friend rightly referred to the problem of turning to vouchers and the unsatisfactory nature of that, but there is also, of course, the totally unsatisfactory nature of a situation in which those people no longer have any housing. All hon. Members who have asylum centres in their constituencies know that those people are too frightened to return to their own countries and, as they are not being deported by the Government, live in a terrible form of limbo. They have to rely on the charity and good will of their fellow asylum seekers, which means that they sleep three, four or five on the floor of a pretty rotten piece of NASS accommodation that is designed for one, and carve up that £37 a week into ever smaller bundles. That cannot be acceptable.

Lynne Jones: My hon. Friend is not quite correct. Since the provisions of section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 became more widely known, those failed asylum seekers are allocated accommodation under what is called "hard cases support." The Government's preference is that that should be on a full-board basis, but the numbers have grown by more than tenfold and of the more than 5,000 such individuals in accommodation, only 10 per cent. receive full board. The rest are given food vouchers and no other support. It is that situation that I raised with the Home Secretary, and I ask him to consider it urgently because such people are in dire need. They cannot even get the bus fare to travel to the reporting centres, which they are obliged to do on a regular basis.

Mark Fisher: I am sure that my hon. Friend is right officially, but that does not accord with my experience of surgeries for asylum seekers. People who are refused asylum are in despair because they have lost their access to NASS and their housing. They turn to what they see—perhaps erroneously—as their only method of support, which is each other. That is wholly unsatisfactory.
	I fear that for all the good employment measures in the Bill, it will make the situation marginally worse. It may appear initially to appease some of those who wish that the problem would go away, that we did not face international obligations and that there was no pressure across the world to make people leave their homes in fear of their lives, but that wish fulfilment is not going to come about. The Bill may appeal to them, but it will not solve the problem.
	I fear that the Bill and its predecessors will do nothing to enhance Britain's reputation across the world as a safe haven—the very thing for which those asylum seekers turn to this country. When someone's tribe or country has been in turmoil and their life threatened, people in the 20th century—in particular since the second world war—have rightly said that Britain is a safe place, with justice, decency and fairness, to which they can appeal and, if they make a good case, be looked after. Neither the Bill nor its predecessors contribute to that. We are in danger of losing that reputation.
	Although the responsibilities are difficult and not popular with the British people—understandably so, in many ways—we have those responsibilities internationally. This is a reputation that we built up by the decent treatment of asylum seekers and refugees throughout the 20th century. Do not let us throw away that reputation and be seen in the eyes of the world as yet another country that wants to turn away and ignore the awful realities that exist around the world.

Alistair Carmichael: It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher). He speaks with intelligence and compassion. His speech was an excellent model of the reasoned and level approach that is needed in contributions on such a subject and I commend him for it.
	Here we are again. It is another Tuesday and another Home Office Bill. It seems in this brave new Labour world that the legislative output of a Department is inversely proportionate to its effectiveness. Taken on that measure, I suspect that the Prime Minister's reported concerns at the weekend about the Home Office may have some foundation in fact.
	The Bill is a mixed bag: a mix of the good, the bad and the indifferent. Some parts of it—the restriction on the right to appeal, for example—are plain wrongheaded and contradict other parts of Government policy, such as the encouragement of universities to recruit students from overseas. Other parts could be made to work with appropriate safeguards in place. They include the further rights of the Home Office and the police to demand information about passengers on ships and aircraft before they have reached the United Kingdom, and to share information between them and the Revenue and Customs. A few measures are broadly to be welcomed and we can support the Government on them—I think in particular of the measures to deal with those who employ people working illegally. However, they must not be targeted at the employees; their focus must be tackling the worst and most exploitative employers.
	The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) made an interesting speech, but I was surprised that initially he was so unambiguous in his support for the Government. Having listened carefully to the whole speech, I am no better informed as to why the official Opposition have given their unambiguous support to the Government, but perhaps in the course of today's debate or in Committee that will become clearer.
	As currently drafted, the Bill proposes to remove all rights of appeal against refusal to vary leave to remain except where previous leave was granted to a refugee. Such appeals could be argued only on the basis that someone was a refugee and that the United Kingdom's obligations under the UN convention on refugees had been breached, not on any other family, compassionate or human rights grounds. The Bill gives the Secretary of State absolute discretion to restore rights in circumstances to be specified by order—or not, as he sees fit. I am afraid that there is little in the current standard of decision making to justify that change. Even if the current decisions were all flawless, the removal of any check by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal would lead to deteriorating decision making. The only fair method is to allow people to challenge adverse decisions before the AIT, failing which there will inevitably be increased resort to judicial review, along with the accompanying costs and hassle.
	The Bill will remove rights of appeal against refusal of entry clearance abroad from everyone, except people who are applying to visit specified family members or who are applying as defendants of specified individuals. That means that students, workers, working holidaymakers and ministers of religion would not be able to appeal. I am afraid that I simply do not see the justification for that. Where are the abuses in those cases and what mischief are the Government seeking to cure? Fiona Lindsley, the independent monitor of entry clearance refusals without the right of appeal, said in her report of February 2005 that
	"extrapolating from my file samples in 2002 and 2003 I calculate that 28,000 applicants have been wrongly denied rights of appeal in these two years".
	That figure is quite appalling.

Patrick Hall: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the priority should be to achieve high quality first decisions? Assuming that such decision making is achieved, it is essential that we retain the right of appeal to ensure that individuals making those decisions know that there is a system of scrutiny that does not involve resort to judicial review.

Alistair Carmichael: I agree and I shall come on to that point in a moment. The hon. Gentleman may find that he has more support for that proposal at a senior level in his own party than he realised. Essentially, however, I agree that in any judicial process—and this is a quasi-judicial process—the first decision will be better if it is thought that a higher authority may review it at a later stage.

Jennifer Willott: As my hon. Friend has said, the Bill removes the right of appeal from international students. Is he aware that Welsh universities are trying actively to increase their intake of international students, given the social and economic benefits that they generate? Given that two thirds of appeals by international students are overturned, does he not think it appalling that the Bill removes the right of appeal, making it harder for international students to come to the UK and thus creating injustices?

Alistair Carmichael: I was not aware of the position in Wales and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing it to my attention. It is worth stating again that overseas students bring benefits to this country. They improve the diversity of further and higher education institutions and help us to establish contacts and build bridges to the future decision makers and opinion formers in countries—generally, developing nations—that are important to our future security. My hon. Friend therefore makes a fine point.
	I have dwelt on those provisions because they are a good illustration of the difficulties caused by the Government's general approach in that policy area. A major consolidation Bill could have been introduced this year, and such a measure would have been timely. Instead, we have another Bill that chips away at appeal rights in an unco-ordinated and piecemeal way. We have not been given an explanation of why it is thought necessary, which demonstrates a lack of respect for people seeking to migrate, visit or study in the UK.

Keith Vaz: The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case against the Bill and is arguing in favour of retaining the right of appeal. Can he therefore tell the House why the Liberal Democrat party is abstaining on Second Reading rather than voting against the Bill?

Alistair Carmichael: If those provisions constituted the entire Bill I could not countenance abstaining from voting. As I said at the beginning of my speech, the Bill is a mixed bag. Some provisions are downright wrong—including those with which I have dealt—some provisions could be improved in Committee, and others are good. It is probably not necessary to do so, but I remind the hon. Gentleman that on Second Reading we debate a Bill's broad principles. We are acting responsibly in allowing the Government the opportunity to atone for their sins and make proper amendment if possible. We are unlikely to vote against the Bill tonight, but that will not necessarily be the case later if significant improvements fail to materialise.
	Clauses 4 and 5 will have an impact on overseas students. The proposal is not new—it was last tried in 1992, which may explain why the Conservative party is enthusiastic about it. The then shadow Home Secretary made some interesting comments on 2 November 1992:
	"No justification has been advanced . . . other than this, which we heard again from the Secretary of State: the system is overloaded"—
	I believe that that is what the present Home Secretary was saying today. In 1992, the then Home Secretary continued:
	"It is a novel, bizarre and misguided principle of the legal system that if the exercise of legal rights is causing administrative inconvenience, the solution is to remove the right. No doubt that might satisfy bureaucrats and Government administrators in many areas, but it can hardly be a justification for removing rights."
	He went on to make a point that has also been made today:
	"When a right of appeal is removed, what is removed is a valuable and necessary constraint on those who exercise original jurisdiction. That is true not merely of immigration officers but of anybody. The immigration officer who knows that his decision may be subject to appeal is likely to be a good deal more circumspect, careful and even-handed than the officer who knows that his power of decision is absolute. That is simply, I fear, a matter of human nature, quite apart from anything else."—[Official Report, 2 November 1992; Vol. 123, c. 43.]
	Wise words, spoken by the right hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) on 2 November 1992. Clearly, the rifts between No. 10 Downing street and the Home Office run deeper than was believed to be the case at the weekend.
	The point about the quality of the decision making bears closer examination. I shall favour the House with a brief example offered to me by the university of Sheffield. Following a refusal decision made by the British high commission in Nigeria on 5 April 2004, the applicant, a Dr. E, was told:
	"The cost of your tuition, maintenance and accommodation is to be borne by your sponsor. Funding your education will impose an additional financial burden upon him and I am not satisfied that this increased financial outlay is commensurate with his current economic circumstances."
	In fact, the student had been awarded a 50 per cent. university of Sheffield fee bursary and was to be on leave on full pay from his position as a dental surgeon. The appeal came to the appellate authority in the United Kingdom and was successful.
	We do not have the full decision letter, but that was one of the cases where even informal representations, which are often successful without the matter going to appeal, had been made and were unsuccessful. If Dr. E had not been allowed to appeal, he would not have been allowed to come to the United Kingdom to conduct important research. The university of Sheffield gives a figure of 90 per cent. of cases where, after informal representations or appeal, the decisions of entry clearance officers are overturned. The point about the quality of initial decision making cannot be overstressed.
	I want to say a little about a fairly minor part of the Bill, but which is nevertheless profound in its impact—clause 9. The provision adds a restriction to make the lives of people contesting a Home Office decision that much more difficult. Its effect is that people who are appealing against decisions will no longer retain the rights that they had under their previous leave to remain. Thus they would no longer be permitted to work or to receive benefits to which they had been entitled. As the Home Office is pressing through decisions and the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal is hearing cases ever more quickly, one wonders why the extra restriction is necessary. It will cause real hardship to individuals and families.
	A person who has been recognised as a refugee is entitled to work and to claim, and is now usually given indefinite leave to remain. Under new plans, if it is alleged that he can return to his country of origin, his leave could be curtailed or indefinite leave refused. On appeal, he would not be entitled to work, his employer would face criminal sanctions for keeping him on, and he would not be able to support his family or retain his home, still less pay for legal representation in the appeal process. Those who previously held humanitarian or discretionary leave or others previously in long-term categories with the right to work would face the same plight, were the Home Secretary to exercise his power to extend appeal rights under proposed section 82.
	There is no indication that the Home Office has considered how people would live to be able to fight their appeals. Will the National Asylum Support Service remit be extended to people in that situation? Perhaps the Minister can answer that when he sums up. Would it be section 4 emergency support, or would people in effect be denied any redress for adverse decisions because they would be unable to live while waiting to fight the case? It will be a stark situation facing such people.
	As I indicated at the start of my speech, we broadly welcome the proposals for dealing with those who employ illegal workers. I organised a briefing for Scottish Members last night from the director of the Scottish Drug Enforcement Agency, who is intimately involved in the setting up of the Serious Organised Crime Agency as it will operate north of the border. One of the things he told us last night was that people trafficking and illegal working lie at the heart of just about every aspect of serious organised crime in this country, in particular the drugs trade. There is still some scope for improvement in the Government's proposals and we will probe Ministers in Committee.

Lynne Featherstone: Although we all want to see an end to the illegal employment that my hon. Friend describes, is there not a concern that the introduction of a new inspection regime and civil penalties and the documentation provided by the Home Office might discriminate against ethnic minorities being employed by risk-averse employers? I would welcome Government attention being paid to that.

Alistair Carmichael: Perhaps because we have discussed the Bill previously, my hon. Friend anticipates two points that I intended to make. First, there is a danger that we will pass on to employers an administrative burden, particularly in relation to the checking of documentation. Secondly, and perhaps more insidiously, there is the issue of risk-averse employers. My hon. Friend puts it well. There is a danger that informal discrimination will build up as a result of the measure. Safeguards must be put in place to ensure that that does not happen. I hope that we can deal with this aspect in Committee.
	Civil penalties, to which my hon. Friend refers, are dealt with in clauses 11 to 16. I do not want to get too involved in the matter, but the Government have not yet made the case for the introduction and use of civil penalties as proposed. I have some reservations about it and about the way it would be administered. I would prefer more to be written into the Bill, but we will let the Government make their case and we will judge them accordingly.

Jon Cruddas: Rather than supporting the Government on the matter, why do the Liberal Democrats not probe or suggest the large-scale regularisation of workers in such conditions as a way of ameliorating their exploitation at work?

Alistair Carmichael: That is not a million miles away from the position stated in our manifesto at the last general election. The point that we were making in relation to people trafficking is that the focus of Government attention has been all wrong. We should be offering protection to the victims of people trafficking and illegal working instead of treating them as the criminals. We should be giving them support so that we can pursue those responsible—the employers and the traffickers. That would be an eminently sensible and practical way of dealing with the problem, which will only get worse if we continue to go for the low-level victims.
	In his speech, the Home Secretary made brief reference to the establishment of a code of practice under clause 19. Again, I recognise the need for a code of practice, but I am concerned that we have reached Second Reading without seeing even a draft. If we are to take the Bill into Committee in the autumn, the Minister has two or three months to make at least a draft available to Members to consider; otherwise, the Government are selling us a pig-in-a-poke. We deserve better treatment from the Government. If a code of practice is crucial to the operation of the Bill, as part of the scrutiny of the Bill the House should know what the terms of that code of practice will be.
	The part of the Bill relating to claimants and applicants was described by the Immigration Legal Practitioners Association as
	"a miscellany of the unobjectionable and the deeply worrying."
	Parts, such as clause 37, represent a sensible extension to local authorities of powers currently delegated only to the private sector to accommodate failed asylum seekers and other applicants granted temporary admission or bail pending decision or removal.
	The provision for integration loans to refugees introduced in the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 was framed with reference to the common-sense and humane policy introduced by the Government in their 1998 White Paper, which granted indefinite leave to remain to refugees at the point of recognition. It is now proposed, under the five-year strategy, to renege on that policy, so the amendment in clause 38 that ensures that integration loans can be provided to refugees with limited leave to remain is to be welcomed as at least limiting the damage. We nevertheless deplore the proposed policy change, which is bound to militate against integration and thus undermine the benefits of the clause by deferring settlement for at least five years. Several practitioners in this area believe that that places the UK in breach of article 34 of the 1951 refugee convention, which obliges contracting states to facilitate the assimilation of refugees, and in particular to make every effort to expedite naturalisation.
	Much of the Bill is capable of improvement. I am not minded to suggest to my right hon. and hon. Friends that we should impede its progress at this stage, but we shall seek very substantial improvements in Committee and thereafter. If those improvements are not forthcoming, the Government should not count on the support of the Liberal Democrats at later stages.

Keith Vaz: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me in this debate. In the 18 years since I have been a Member of this House, I think that I have spoken in every Second Reading debate on immigration Bills.
	When I was first elected, there was always a Division at the end of Second Reading, with the Labour party opposing whatever the Conservative party was doing. Over the years, a consensus has developed on immigration and asylum, and I understand that no party will vote against the Second Reading of this Bill. That places me in a dilemma, because I want to vote against it but find myself with nobody to vote with me. As a serial loyalist who has been accused of voting with the payroll even though I am not on the payroll, I was looking forward to this first rebellion of my career. I then heard the Home Secretary reassuring me about several key aspects of the Bill and decided that I would vote in favour of it in a Division. But then I heard the shadow Home Secretary, and decided that if he was going to support the Government, I had to vote against. I then heard the Liberal Democrat spokesman tell us that the Liberal Democrats, who so often campaign in the Asian community about their support for that community, intend to abstain. I have not sought the advice of the Clerks as to whether I can call a Division on my own, but it seems as though my ambition of rebelling will be short-lived.
	The importance of a debate of this kind is that it enables Members of Parliament with large ethnic populations to bring issues of concern to the House. It also enables those who do not have large Asian and black communities to tell us about their constituents' concerns. The emerging consensus is that we should be tough but fair as far as immigration policy is concerned. I believe that this is a very tough Government on immigration matters. When I write to the immigration and nationality directorate, only in very few instances are Ministers and officials prepared to overturn decisions that have gone to adjudicators. I understand that. After 18 years, I now have to tell constituents who come to see me on a Friday afternoon and ask me to intervene in immigration cases that once they have been to the adjudicator I am unable to intervene and they should make arrangements to return to their country of origin. I did not say that 10 years ago, partly because the mood has changed, but also because I am pleased with the changes that the Government have made over the past eight years to ensure that the settled British Asian community is protected with important rights, such as the abolition of the primary purpose rule in 1997 and the decision to restore appeal rights three years ago.
	I wonder whether an immigration and asylum Bill is necessary at this stage. We should be considering how the immigration system operates, which means having a long and careful look at how the immigration and nationality directorate deals with casework. When I first came here, I tabled several parliamentary questions and discovered that at IND in Croydon there were hundreds of thousands of unopened application letters that people had sent in at the time of the previous Conservative Government.I knew that that situation would change once Labour got into power in 1997, but my first message to the Government is that it has not changed enough: we still have a major problem with the way in which IND operates. That is not a legislative issue, but one of administrative control. Many constituents come to my surgeries and complain about the famous 13-week-target letter. They make their application and are told that their case will be dealt with in 13 weeks' time, but two years later it is still not dealt with. We are then forced to write to Ministers and officials to ensure that something is done about the delay.
	The problem with a system that does work efficiently and effectively is that people make their applications, wait for years, and during that time become, not in the legal sense but in the emotional and physical sense, settled in the United Kingdom. Some of them have managed to conceive and give birth to up to three or four children in the time that it has taken for IND to determine their cases. They come to the Member of Parliament's surgery right at the end of the process, having been to an appeal and been told that they must leave the country, and throw themselves on our mercy expecting us to perform miracles, but of course that is not possible. The huge cuts in legal aid mean that we cannot send our constituents to solicitors who practise in this area because there are so few with the necessary expertise to deal with such issues properly. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir   Gerald Kaufman) said, many practitioners called "immigration consultants" exploit our constituents, but unfortunately there is nothing we can do about that at the end of the process.
	I believe that the Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality are seized of the importance of this issue, and they make a good team. They are clearly tough and robust; they are big men. It is important to have immigration policy in the hands of such people. I was gratified to hear what the Home Secretary said earlier. I am pleased with the approach taken by the Minister, who is aware of the importance to this country of the settled British Asian community because he has 36,000 people of Asian origin living in his constituency. I have 40,000 people of Asian origin living in mine—although this is not a competition. Several hon. Members on both sides of the House have sizeable settled British Asian communities. On my side, we have my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Khabra), and on the Opposition side we have the new hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Scott). Their majorities at the last election are dwarfed by the size of their settled British Asian communities. My hon. Friends the Members for Watford (Claire Ward) and for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) are in a similar position.
	We welcome the contribution of the British Asian community, which is settled in this country. That is why I am so much against the Government's proposal, in their five-year strategy, to remove the right of oral appeals. During the 2001 general election, I campaigned to get those appeals restored. Originally, we charged a fee for them. The then Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw), who also knows all about these issues, arranged to have them abolished, giving our constituents the right to tell their relatives that they can appeal if the entry clearance officer turns down their application to come into this country. The right of oral appeal is extremely important. The Minister rightly pointed out that the Government will not completely abolish the right of appeal for family visits. They will abolish only oral appeals. However, the facts are clear: 70 per cent. of oral appeals are successful. It is vital that people have the chance to put their views to an adjudicator. I know that many people appeal in writing, but that is not the same. They have a right for their cases to be heard.
	It is extremely important to bear in mind my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's words, which the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) quoted. The hon. Gentleman took away the best quote of my speech. Those words reminded us of the genuine importance of the right of appeal.
	The proposals do not only affect family visitors; the Bill also provides for taking away overseas students' right of appeal. Several hon. Members—almost every hon. Member in the Chamber this evening—have in their constituencies educational institutions that have overseas students. I have two big universities— De Montfort, which is one of the biggest universities in the country, and Leicester. We rely on overseas students and believe that they contribute enormously to the life of the universities in our areas.
	This morning, Universities UK not only wrote to the Financial Times—we do not often disagree with 120 vice-chancellors who all agree on the same issue and write a joint letter to the Financial Times—but held a meeting in the House. Several hon. Members were present. The organisation made the point that not only do overseas students contribute more than £3 billion to £4 billion to the economy, but 210,000 of them come to this country every year.
	Since 11 September 2001, several people, not only from the Asian sub-continent but from the Arab world, who would have sent their children to university in the United States, told me that they would not send their children to America—I do not refer only to the ivy league universities—because of the difficulty, based on their ethnic origin, of obtaining entry clearance. They chose London instead. The Bill will be a further restriction on the number of people who come here to study. That will damage our international standing and, more importantly, the long-standing relationships that are built up over many years by people who study here.

Vincent Cable: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his admirable speech, with which I agree. Does he agree that, if student visa changes, on top of visa charges, deter applicants to the UK, the inevitable consequence will be a reduction in income to British universities, and that the Government will be obliged to pursue other sources of student income, perhaps raising in advance of their timetable British domestic tuition fees?

Keith Vaz: The hon. Gentleman is right. He reminds me that when my family came to this country in 1965, when I was nine, as first generation immigrants, we settled in his constituency. My mother retrained as a teacher—her qualifications from the then South Yemen and originally from India were not accepted—at St. Mary's college in Strawberry Hill, which is another example of a higher education institution that attracts people from all over the world. The hon. Gentleman is right about visa fees. I stress that people do not mind paying fees if they get the service. They resent having to pay a fee if the service they get is bad—as it is, I am sorry to say, in the immigration and nationality directorate.
	The proposals will place enormous power in the hands of entry clearance officers. A couple of years ago, under the inspirational chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), the Constitutional Affairs Committee went to the sub-continent to consider immigration appeals from source. The Committee produced an excellent report, in which we considered the quality of decision making. The Prime Minister, the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland and I believe that it would be bad to take away the right of appeal. It would place more and more power in the hands of entry clearance officers. That is fine when they can make high-quality decisions that are justifiable and can be defended. Let us consider, for example, Carol Doughty, director of visa services in New Delhi. If there is a problem with which UK Visas cannot help and the appeal process does not work, one can ring Carol Doughty and get a good decision.
	On the other hand, I have only three cases in Islamabad—all 20,000 of my other cases are with India—and one can never get through to an entry clearance manager in Islamabad and Karachi. I cannot understand why more of my hon. Friends who represent constituencies with many Pakistani-origin cases do not complain more. One has to get up at 5 am to speak directly to an entry clearance director, who spends her entire time telling you how awful the system is and that she needs more resources.
	If we take away the right of appeal, we place power in the hands of unelected decision makers. That encourages us to go to the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality and the Minister with responsibility for entry clearance. The work load of Ministers, not adjudicators, who will not be able to determine the cases, will increase under the proposals. We will be ringing Ministers all the time, asking for overturns because the system does not give us the right of appeal.
	I want to end with one example of what happens in a system that has no right of appeal. This afternoon, a constituent telephoned me because his nine-year-old nephew had come to visit him from South Africa. The nephew is of Indian origin and his name is Yash Patel. He arrived at terminal 1 of Heathrow airport and was refused admission because the immigration officers believed that there was not a sufficient programme of activities for the nine-year-old during his visit to his uncle in Leicester. They thought that he would spend all his time at the hairdresser's shop owned by his aunt. The immigration officers also felt that it was wrong for him to come to this country because his parents are very poor and the officers wondered how he could afford the ticket.
	The boy has been at Heathrow airport for most of the day. I telephoned the office of the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality. As usual, it provided a fantastic service and I pay tribute to the Minister's private office for its work. Staff gave me the phone number of the chief immigration officer. I spoke to chief immigration officer No. 1, who passed me to chief immigration officer No. 2, who would not overturn the decision. He said that he could not make the decision and he passed me to the deputy director at IND who deals with such cases. I rang her twice. On both occasions, her mailbox was full and I could not get through.
	Luckily, given that we are discussing Second Reading of the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill, I bumped into my old friend, the Minister. I told him about my problem and he behaved sympathetically. He got on to his private office and the deputy director at IND rang my office. I am pleased to say that the young boy has been allowed to stay, not for the original period that he wanted to stay for his holiday, but for two weeks on temporary admission.
	There is no right of appeal against refusal for temporary admission. We have to ring all those offices and get the Minister involved to deal with those cases. I do not make a personal attack on individuals in the system, who work extraordinarily hard. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for International Development, who is rightly respected and admired in the Asian community in this country for his work. However, I stress to him, the Home Secretary and other hon. Members that we are dealing not with asylum seekers but with our constituents—people who are settled in this country and are equal citizens to us.
	Although I cannot find any hon. Member who will vote with me against the Bill tonight—my rebellion therefore ends when I finish speaking—I urge the Minister in his winding-up speech to give me the assurances that we need to show us that the Government are seized of the issues and that there will be genuine progress to ensure that we have the necessary safeguards to protect our citizens' rights.

Alistair Burt: It is always a pleasure to listen to the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). He was worried that his instinct to vote against the Bill was not shared by his colleagues or by anyone else in the House. He also gave a lucid explanation of one or two aspects of the Bill that he found wrong. The hon. Gentleman is not noticeably shy, and he has always stood up for causes that others, particularly in his own party, have abandoned—the euro and the European constitution, for example—so I think that he ought to go with his instinct on this occasion and force a vote, although my own Whips might not want me to say that.
	I appreciate having this chance to comment on the Bill. I particularly welcome the powers in clause 39 to extend monitoring operations to cover the escort services. I am concerned that the Bill is otherwise defective, however, in that it does not provide sufficient protection for detainees from arbitrary decisions. I am also worried that the Home Secretary has given his guarantee that the provisions of the Bill are compatible with the European convention on human rights. I shall query whether such a guarantee is appropriate in relation to some of the detainees who are facing return to places such as Zimbabwe.
	I had not intended to speak today, but events connected to Zimbabwean detainees in Yarl's Wood in my constituency over the past three weeks—and particularly over the past 24 hours—have left me appalled at the way in which some of their cases are being handled. I want to make it clear to the House, and to the Minister, where I am coming from on this issue. I represent Yarl's Wood, and I take very seriously my relationship with those who work there and those who pass through. I try to understand the asylum policy that we apply and, by and large, I support the principles behind it, as the Minister is aware. If a person has been properly represented and has gone through all the appeal processes and been adjudged to be not an asylum seeker but someone who needs to be returned, the policy must require that return, if it is to mean anything.
	I have defended such a system, and I have defended my constituents who work at Yarl's Wood in difficult circumstances to make that policy work. However, my defence of that system was based on a sense of justice and decency, and I am now beyond defending it and the decisions of those who are behind it. Their cavalier treatment of the vulnerable people in their care is a scandal to our reputation as a decent nation.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) spoke earlier of how the Government had let people down over the years. He mentioned briefly their proposal in 2001 to increase the number of removals. That was when my change of heart began in relation to this policy—when I found out that Yarl's Wood was built on fraud. In November last year, the Prison Service ombudsman published his report on the 2002 fire at Yarl's Wood, in which some 300 people avoided death purely by chance. That report exposed the fraudulent nature of Yarl's Wood's origins. It was built to enable the Government to meet a target of 30,000 removals a year, a commitment given in their 2001 election manifesto and on the Floor of the House by the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw).
	It transpired from the ombudsman's report, however, that that target was nonsense. No one responsible in the Home Office or the immigration service believed in it. How did the Home Secretary come to rely on such a figure? As the report made clear, it was because the officials who challenged it were told that they were "troublemakers", and "not one of us". "Reasoned debate", said one senior figure, chillingly, "was forbidden". Immediately after the election, the new Home Secretary was informed that the target was undeliverable. Is it credible that it became undeliverable during the course of an election campaign, and that the Home Secretary did not know this? Frankly, no. It was either incompetence or deceit; the House must make up its own mind. In the rush to achieve that nonsensical target, an inadequate fire trap was built, in which people worked and were detained until it burnt down in minutes after being set on fire in a wicked act of arson perpetrated by persons unknown.
	The revelation of the story, chronicled in full in the ombudsman's report, and the shameful failure of the Government to apologise for what had happened, or to counter the statement that reasoned debate about the targets was forbidden, profoundly changed my perception of the asylum system and those who were behind it. It offends my sense of justice not to see put right the things that were wrong. But that is history, although it has a bearing on the matters before us today.
	Let us come up to date. I am pleased that the Bill will extend powers of inspection to the escort services that take detainees to ports of departure. I should like to illustrate the kind of incident that the new monitoring service should look at. Three weeks ago, I met a Zimbabwean detainee who alleged that she and two others had been assaulted by the escort service taking them to the airport in pursuance of an order to remove them. She had been temporarily released, but had learned that one of the others, who was scheduled to have an X-ray at Bedford hospital, was being removed a few days before the appointment, and before the completion of the inquiry into the alleged assault in which she had been both a victim and a witness. That seemed strange, but not unusual. I had a written question answered by the Minister yesterday, in which I had inquired how many people who had made a complaint about the escort services were removed before the investigation had been completed. I was told that the answer could not be provided, because to do so would take up inordinate resources. So that recent incident cannot have been all that unusual.
	Problems with the escort services are not uncommon. They have a very difficult job to do. Those who do not want to leave the United Kingdom can make life very hard for the people whose job is to carry out the order. If those scheduled to return resist physically, it must be lawful to use reasonable force to get them to comply. But the problem can be seen immediately. What is reasonable force in those circumstances, particularly in the highly charged circumstances of a removal? And if allegations and cross-allegations are made, who is to judge what has happened if there is no independent witness?
	I, and other MPs, have taken this matter to the Home Office before. On a visit to Yarl's Wood about a year ago, I was shocked by the vehemence of the women detainees when the question of the escort services was raised. There were too many accounts of casually inflicted violence and verbal abuse to dismiss out of hand. And while I understood very well how difficult it could be to move a powerful woman resisting removal, the majority of African and Asian women at Yarl's Wood are not big people, and they were never in a one-to-one situation. It was obvious who would come off best in a physical confrontation.

Nadine Dorries: Is it surprising that, when women are being forced to go back to countries such as Zimbabwe, they resist the escort services? We all know how horrendously Mugabe is behaving towards the people of his country. If I were being deported to Zimbabwe, I would resist strongly as well.

Alistair Burt: My hon. Friend understands my drift; she has also anticipated a point that I was about to make. There is a problem facing the immigration service and those who work at Yarl's Wood. What should they do when people feel an instinctive sympathy with those who are resisting deportation?
	When those allegations were made, I did not go public, heavy with outrage. I went to see the right hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. Browne), then the Minister responsible for these matters, about the need for CCTV to be carried in the escort services' vehicles. He agreed with me that the Government took the allegations seriously, and CCTV cameras were ordered for the vehicles. We have to assume, therefore, that there was some substance to the allegations. Accordingly, I am afraid that the House must assume that physical abuse by the escort services taking people to ports of departure existed, and continues to exist.
	I shall return to the incident of the other week. The allegation was that on 2 May 2005, three Zimbabwean women were taken from Yarl's Wood. They were taken in separate private cars, because the demand for vehicles with CCTV is high and they are not always available. Therefore, there was no CCTV. They were driven to the side of a Kenya Airways airplane, and one woman in the car made it clear that she did not want to go. Each of the detainees was accompanied by three other people, both men and women. As soon as the first woman had made it clear that she did not want to go, all three were seized on and bound, and physical efforts were made to force them on to the plane. On their return to Yarl's Wood, they complained of their treatment, were treated for their injuries, and some were ill for many days subsequently.
	As those are allegations, I will say no more about them, except that I would have thought—I hope that the House agrees—that they were pretty serious. I have therefore asked the Home Office to stop carrying out deportations unless escort services are equipped with CCTV on all occasions, or failing that, to give the detainees the chance to have an independent observer with them. I tabled that written question to the Minister last week, and it has not been answered definitively. Will he say in his wind-up whether no escort service will be used unless there is CCTV or an independent observer, in order to prevent the problems with such allegations? For the sake of the system's integrity, the independent monitoring of the service, as under clause 39, is to be welcomed. I am only sorry that it is needed.
	What of the omissions from the Bill? Last Sunday, I paid another visit to Yarl's Wood to see those women who had been refusing food. I wanted to ensure their welfare and to discuss with the Yarl's Wood authorities what their responsibilities toward them were. I was aware of an incident on the previous day, which was reported subsequently, in which about a dozen women at Yarl's Wood had obstructed the deportation of another detainee and barricaded a room. After a few hours, the authorities were able to regain control without violence or injuries to anyone. The women responsible for the protests and on hunger strike were segregated in a separate unit. I met them, they had free association and plenty of space, and apart from being understandably sad at their situation and distressed at reports of what was happening in Zimbabwe, they were physically well. They were encouraged by reports of what people on both sides of the House are doing to raise the issue of deportations back to Zimbabwe, including the efforts of the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey). They were as puzzled as the rest of us that the Government seemed to be turning a deaf ear to the cry to halt deportations to Zimbabwe.
	The Yarl's Wood authorities appeared to be ready to return those women from segregation to the rest of their friends. Last night, at 10 o'clock, I received a call from the Zimbabwe Association, which told me that three women in segregation had been removed from Yarl's Wood to an unknown destination, without reason, at 9 pm last night. I began to make inquiries—I asked why they had been removed and who had made the decision. Those are the least inquiries to be made by an MP. The Yarl's Wood authorities told me that the ladies had been told that they were going to Colinbrook, a short-term detention centre, but no reason had been given, and it was not the decision of Yarl's Wood to remove them.
	I was given another number to call of an official in the Detention Escort And Population Management Unit—DEPMU. That official sounded nonplussed when I asked him for a reason why the women had been removed . "We don't have to give a reason for moving people around, I was told. He sounded surprised, as if no one had asked him that question before. After a short and heated conservation, in which I indicated that in this country he did indeed have to have a reason for moving people around in the detention estate, I was passed on to someone else—it was now 11 o'clock in the evening. That official was equally surprised to be asked to have a reason. After about 10 minutes of discussion, however, he told me that the women had been placed in Colinbrook because it was ultimately easier to remove them from there to Heathrow— once they had been separated from their friends and their spirit had been broken—and that that was why they were taken away from Yarl's Wood. This lunchtime, I spoke to the deputy head of the immigration service, who was good enough both to confirm that, and to accept responsibility for the move to Colinbrook, on the grounds of what he termed "security".
	I appreciate the courtesy in difficult circumstances of those who spoke to me, because I was not as courteous as I might have been—I was extremely angry—particularly that of the Minister's private secretary, Claire, to whom I was courteous, who spoke to me until 1 o'clock in the morning in her efforts to find out what had happened? Let us examine what I have described, however, in relation to the Bill and its protection for detainees.
	I am immensely concerned that a DEPMU officer's first instinctive response to my question about the reasons why those in detention, who had committed no crime and been removed from friends and supporters, was negative. The deputy director of immigration indicated that that was wrong and that a reason should have been given, and he was clear with his own reasons, but he had had many hours to think of them. I know what I heard at 11 o'clock last night. It was the instinctive reaction of a system that was not regularly challenged and did not like to be challenged—"We don't need to give reasons to move people around." That frightens me. I said to the gentleman that I did not think that I lived in such a country.
	Where in the Bill is a provision to protect detainees from arbitrary decisions, to ensure that when they are given such orders they are given a reason and that those who represent them are given a reason why such a decision has been taken? Many other agencies operating for asylum seekers have alleged for some time that detainees are regularly shunted around, breaking their contact with lawyers or friends, and I have not always believed them. I am not so sure now. I was particularly concerned because two of the three names given to me last night were of people I knew. The first was one of the victims of the alleged assault by the escort service, and the second was an articulate young woman who had acted as spokeswoman for those who had barricaded the room to prevent their friend from being removed—two women who had spoken at length to an MP. Was it coincidence that they were two of the three removed, or, in a bid to ensure security, was it tactically astute to remove those who had had contact with an Opposition MP, or perhaps it was natural that those who would speak to me would probably be the sort of people who would encourage their friends? I do not know the answer.
	If the latter is the case, however, and it might be, may I make a plea to the Minister on behalf of my constituents who work at Yarl's Wood? They are having to implement policy, segregate ringleaders and subdue the spirit of those who are resisting removal, all to help our country send women back to a country that is a byword for tyranny. Should those women resist, as my   hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mrs. Dorries) said? Would we? And should they support their friends? If the Minister sees only the determination of the system to enforce its rules, and to return detainees regardless of destination, he is creating an almost impossible situation in our detention centres. How can removal directions be carried out unless there is a sense of justice and a confidence behind them?
	As for the grounds of security that were given, I presume that it is thought that the women removed last night might be the focus of further resistance if they are given removal orders, or that they might be violent. But let us remember with whom we are dealing. These women have not committed any crime. For the most part, they have been living peacefully in the UK, on temporary admission, for many years. One woman was in the third year of her law degree at Leeds university, and was reporting regularly before she was picked up, and has been in Yarl's Wood for many months, so she has not been able to complete her degree. These are not convicted criminals with a history of violence, who, I remind the Minister, were placed at Yarl's Wood deliberately by the immigration service in the run-up to the incident there in February 2002. These are frightened African women, who are pleading for our compassion at a time when compassion is supposed to be oozing out of every pore of the Government when they talk about Africa.
	The potential of those women for violence can surely be discounted. One of them is so frail now that she was described to me this lunchtime, by an officer at Colinbrook—not a representative of the asylum agencies or organisations—as being so weak that she now finds it difficult to move. Where in this Bill is the British state given the power to break the spirit of women's resistance to going back to a country such as Zimbabwe? I am sorry that the Bill does not address those issues, but it provides a chance for the Government to review again their policy on asylum in the light of the hard case presented by today's conditions in a country to which they are prepared to return failed asylum seekers.
	The reason that I have spoken out in such a way today is that when a woman from a far country, with a black skin, is shunted around the detention estate, having committed no crime, in a situation in which the system does not believe that it owes an explanation to her, to citizens or to representatives, all our civil liberties are at risk. These women have been assaulted by the state's escort service, prevented from completing a degree, prevented from seeing an investigation completed into an allegation of assault, picked on perhaps for talking to an Opposition MP, and removed at night for no reason at all. Return those ladies to Zimbabwe? Some of them probably think that they have never left.

Piara S Khabra: I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the debate, as the subject of migration is extremely personal to me, as an immigrant to this country in 1959, and as the Member of Parliament for a constituency with the third highest Asian immigrant population in the United Kingdom.
	I have no illusions about the Conservatives' policy on race and immigration. They are learning, but they are very slow and sluggish in adapting to changed circumstances and in changing their attitude to ethnic minorities in this country. During my time in the United Kingdom, rhetoric on the issue has generally and thankfully grown more measured, and attitudes have softened. Even in the midst of the hard-fought general election campaign, when the immigration issue was an ever-present reminder of many people's concerns, we never sailed into the murky waters of the "river of blood". Yet the fact that the issue is still so potent is in itself a measure of the work that we still have to do in reassuring the public that we can learn the lessons of the past eight years after taking office, while also ensuring that people appreciate the real contribution that immigrants make to the economic and social infrastructure of Great Britain.
	One way in which we can offer that reassurance is by continuing to work on a system which, although it is improving in some respects, has some way to go if it is to meet the aspirations of the Government's five-year strategy. The Bill is fundamentally about controlling immigration into this country. I welcome several of the steps outlined by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I particularly like the ideas for better co-ordination between border agencies, and the plan to take stricter action against employers who, knowingly or through neglect, shirk their legal responsibilities.
	As one of the Members of Parliament who must deal with a large amount of casework, I know that one of the greatest challenges facing any Government is the need to ensure that agencies with a range of different but related responsibilities work as seamlessly as possible, as a team, to make it that much harder for people to exploit weaknesses in the system. Improved sharing of information is the most obvious example of such team work, and the e-borders programme allowing easier access to carrier information should help to identify individuals who may present a risk to our security and our immigration system.
	I also strongly welcome the Government's efforts to take stronger action against employers such as those in my constituency who pay awful wages to the illegal workers—cheap labour—whom they knowingly employ. The proposal for a new civil penalty for employers of illegal migrant workers is sensible, as are the plans to differentiate between those who negligently employ illegal workers and those who are merely negligent. Hiring illegal immigrants is not just wrong in principle. It can compromise the safety of other workers, as illegal workers are often uninsured, undertrained and overworked and therefore a danger to themselves and those around them. Moreover, they do not have the option of joining a union, and are frequently exploited and paid shameful wages.
	Nevertheless, while I welcome the proposals, I feel that there are real problems that we are not tackling adequately and issues that the Bill should be addressing. The most obvious, and the one from which others flow, is the continued backlog. I receive letters from constituents who have been waiting for five, or even 10, years for an answer from the Home Office. That is simply unacceptable. In the meantime some of those people marry. They may have children. Understandably, at that point removal is no longer a humane option.
	We need more, and more well-trained, caseworkers, and a real will to clear the backlog that is the main problem at the Home Office. An exacerbating factor is the fact that those seeking information from the immigration and nationality directorate on their applications for asylum, or for indefinite leave to remain, find it difficult to know the status of their applications. Members of Parliament who receive letters from constituents then contact the department at Croydon, thus adding a whole new and unnecessary layer of bureaucracy which slows the system even further.
	Essentially, people want to know what is going on. Obviously they would prefer speedy decisions on their applications, but I am sure that many would not feel that they had to contact the department if they were kept advised of the progress of their applications and were given realistic deadlines.

Keith Vaz: Does my hon. Friend not agree that the proposals to restrict rights of appeal in a number of categories will put more pressure on the IND, and increase the backlog?

Piara S Khabra: I agree. I speak from experience when I say that the right of appeal is fundamental. Those proposals will not help the Home Office to deal with immigration problems.
	Unrealistic deadlines are contributing to the present confusion. We need only think of the concession on indefinite leave to remain which, although it was supposed to be completed by May 2004 and then in December 2004, has still not been completed in July 2005. People contact Members of Parliament because they hear about the deadlines, and assume they have missed out because they have heard nothing from the Home Office. The upshot of all the delays and the uncertainty is that people feel that it pays to disappear—and some of them do. That makes effective removals difficult, and leads to headlines about illegal-immigrant numbers such as those that appeared in the press last week.
	I am also concerned about the quality of entry clearance officers' decisions. Since 1992, I have seen thousands of standard refusal notices from ECOs that do not seem adequately to reflect the complexities of many cases. The stereotyping of questions and of circumstances and the way in which interviews are conducted, especially in the case of applications from the Indian sub-continent, are extremely unhelpful. The system of interviewing needs to be modernised to meet the changing and varied realities of visa applications. ECOs enjoy enormous power, but are not currently subject to proper scrutiny by the Foreign Office. Consequently, in many cases genuine applicants for visits are refused visas.
	While we have been admirably flexible in many of our dealings with European migration, we make applicants from countries such as India jump through hoops. That, I feel, is a sad way in which to treat a Commonwealth country where so many people have such personal ties to our population in the United Kingdom.
	As I said earlier, there has undoubtedly been some progress, both in attitudes and administratively, as a result of reforms in the previous three immigration-related Bills passed by the last Government. Further progress has been made in dealing with immigration cases at the Home Office. But although I am a strong supporter of much of what this Government have done, I also have a duty to my constituents to raise concerns on their behalf, and to act as a voice for the frustration that many of them feel daily.
	We have it in our power to make the system work, but we need to show that we have the will to follow through on our promises. Let us not waste the progress that we have made on community cohesion and economic prosperity. Instead, let us show that a well-managed, efficient and flexible immigration system can be a truly great asset to our country's prosperity. I support the Bill.

John Horam: The hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) said that he has spoken in every immigration Bill debate since entering this House. I am afraid that I have to tell him that until now, I had never spoken in such a debate, but there is always a first time, even for someone who has been in the House as long as I have. Perhaps because this is my first such debate, I have found it extremely interesting and rewarding. It has been so not merely because of the expertise demonstrated by the hon. Members for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Khabra) and for Leicester, East, but because of the passionate and sincere speech of my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). The whole House listened to him with rapt attention, and I hope that he will get a proper reply from the Minister who winds up the debate.
	I accept that the Bill is a specific measure that implements the five-year plan, puts into primary legislation the provisions necessary to bring that plan to fruition, and deals with some anomalies in the law. There are many aspects of it that I support. It is necessary for officers to have the power to obtain information from airlines and shipping lines, for example, and to have powers of search. Indeed, I am surprised that such powers have not already been included in primary legislation.
	I also accept the point that was made—very well made—about employment practices. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) rightly said that in many ways, it would have been better if the Government had enforced existing laws more effectively, rather than introducing new ones. There is sometimes an inverse relationship between the Government's effectiveness and the amount of legislation that they introduce.
	The appeal process is a very important issue. Non-experts and non-lawyers such as myself enter into this area with some trepidation. Members in all parts of the House have referred to the difficulties associated with the current appeals system, and the Prime Minister himself has been quoted in this context. The shadow Home Secretary pointed out that it is certainly possible that eliminating the appeals process could lead to less rigorous decision making. If such a process does not exist, such decisions could be taken less carefully and thoroughly.

John Leech: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that removing the appeals process is merely a gesture by a Government who are trying to appear tough on immigration?

John Horam: I cannot comment on the Government's motives, most of which are currently concealed from us. Nevertheless, we must face the fact that they are doing away with appeals in some situations. The Home Secretary himself acknowledged in his opening speech that the quality of decision making will have to improve. The difficulty is that the current appeals process is extensive and is attracting immigration, as the Home Affairs Committee said in its 2001 report on borders. It is clearly a much more long-winded process than that operating in some other countries. It is question of efficiency, which the Government must address.
	Even with my limited experience, I have no doubt that the system is being abused. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) said in an intervention that some solicitors batten on to immigrants and use the system to prolong the process, which was never the intention. As I have discovered from cases in my own constituency, people are left in limbo for many years, which is unacceptable. So although I understand the cynicism that some feel about the Government's position, this is a real issue that has to be addressed.

Andrew Love: I would describe the feeling as concern, rather than cynicism. I have many such cases in my constituency, and I am worried about the very low standard of initial decisions, to which organisations such as the National Audit Office have referred. I have yet to be convinced that doing away with the appeals mechanism will improve the initial decisions. We have to be reassured that other steps will be taken to improve them; otherwise, we will need the appeals process.

John Horam: That is a very fair point, which is why I said that the Government have to address this issue. The hon. Gentleman mentions other steps that the Government could take to ensure that the quality of decision making is improved, but I do not know what they might be. However, we in this House will be watching the Government to see how they deal with this important issue.
	As my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) said in his opening speech, we have to see this Bill, specific and detailed as it is, in the context of the wider debate on immigration. There is no doubt that the question of the number of illegal immigrants is an important issue. I am particularly concerned by the Government's reprehensible attempt over a prolonged period to conceal the numbers, which has not enabled proper debate. Under the heading "Liars and bullies", The Sunday Times pointed out in last Sunday's leader that the Government attempted to conceal—[Interruption.] The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality says that the article is wrong; he will doubtless address this point in his winding-up speech. The article pointed out that in the run-up to the general election, the Prime Minister denied that it was possible to estimate the number of illegal immigrants in this country. But we now know that such an estimate has been made—[Interruption.] The Minister says that no estimate has been made; again, he will doubtless address that issue in his winding-up speech. However, we are led to understand that there is such an estimate.
	I pay tribute to Migration Watch, an independent organisation that has, over the years, teased out some of the relevant issues. Although I am sure that the Office for National Statistics does a perfectly sensible, professional and technical job, given its very limited scope, Migration Watch has attempted to estimate the level of illegal immigration—along with other related factors—which is very difficult for Government statisticians to do. In that regard, it has performed a very important public service.
	When the Government get headlines in responsible journals such as "Liars and bullies", they really should be concerned about the way in which people are regarding the statistics that they produce. In some ways, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) was right to say before the general election that the statistical element—be it the ONS or the organisation that produces crime statistics for the Home Office—should be separated from the Government and put under the aegis of this House. We need an independent body that reports to a Select Committee of this House, for example, and which is therefore able to make totally impartial judgments on the nature of such statistics and when they should be produced. That way, no one will have any doubt about the quality of, or background to, such statistics. That is the only way now that this particular Bill could give anyone any confidence that the facts are in any way correct; otherwise, we will take the view—Labour Members must recognise it—that a great deal of it was simply spun in one way or another or concealed. That is not the way to have an honest debate on such a sensitive and important subject. The Government should reflect more on that.
	The Government have a responsibility to fit immigration into other aspects of policy. In that respect, we are all indebted to my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley)—he will doubtless want to enter the debate at some stage—who has pointed out the link between the level of immigration and housing policy in the south-east. If I recall correctly, my right hon. Friend said in one of his pamphlets that the Deputy Prime Minister made 17 different statements without ever mentioning the fact that the prime driver of housing demand in the south-east was international immigration. It is the biggest factor and my right hon. Friend estimates—I am not trying to grab his speech—that it could be as much as 40 per cent. For anyone living in a suburban area of outer London, that is a huge factor. We are losing nurses, teachers and others who can no longer afford to live in places like Bromley. We must address that problem seriously: it is not good enough to consider only the supply of housing without taking account of the demand. If we do not mention that critical factor at all, we are not likely to get serious policy or even serious discussion of policy.
	It is also important, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire said, to take account of the international context. He eloquently raised a point about Zimbabwe. We have all had a debate—quite rightly, in my view—about Africa over the last two weeks and we are to have more of it this week. Last year, I went to Botswana, 40 per cent. of whose adult population has AIDS. I found that the people there were complaining about losing their nurses to the UK. That country is effectively being deskilled by demand in this country to fill gaps in our national health service. In many African countries, up to a third of graduates in any one year come to Europe. How can capacity be built to deal with the sort of problems that Africa faces, particularly given the lack of leadership—in some countries, corrupt and venal leadership—when a third of a country's graduates are disappearing to Europe every year? That applies even more to the Caribbean. The problem has to be tackled on a moral and practical basis as well as a domestic UK basis.
	A final point put very eloquently by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden is that there is clearly a division of Government opinion on this matter. In his speech at Gateshead before the last general election, the present Home Secretary seemed to be saying that all immigration was welcome. Indeed, he wished that we had more immigrants of all kinds—students, refugees, economic migrants and so forth. The Prime Minister, however, in an attempt to win the election, was obviously setting out targets and trying to assure everyone that immigration levels would come down. The number of asylum seekers has come down, but the fact is that there is no intellectual coherence about Government policy. The lack of management is stark and the attempt to stifle debate by obscuring and denying the facts—

Edward Miliband: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

John Horam: No, I am just about to finish my speech.
	The Government's attempt to deny the truth is reprehensible, and they have a great deal to answer for in that respect.

Neil Gerrard: This is the sixth Bill on immigration and asylum that I have seen before the House since I was elected in 1992. As other hon. Members have spoken about their experience of those Bills, I shall start by saying that I am probably the only Member who has served on the Committee considering all five of the previous Bills. I always tried to approach the Bills objectively. The first two were under a Tory Government and the next three under a Labour Government, but I have been objective in voting against Third Reading on all five.
	I have to say that my experience of Bills on immigration and asylum has been that they are generally bad news, although the current Bill may be rather less bad news than some of its predecessors. Bearing in mind some of the comments of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) earlier, I recall that in 1993 and 1996 Tory Home Secretaries told us that they had every answer to every problem in the immigration and asylum system. In respect of Tory comments about illegal immigration into this country, I recall being a member of the Committee considering the Immigration and Asylum Bill in 1999. One sitting started at 4.30 on a Tuesday afternoon and finished at 1 o'clock on Wednesday afternoon. We went right through the night and into the next day. That happened because of a Tory filibuster over our proposals to introduce penalties for people who were bringing illegal immigrants into the country in lorries. Clearly, the Tories have changed their views a bit since 1999.
	There are some problems with the Bill. Some of the more serious ones lie not in the Bill itself, but in the secondary legislation that relates to it. Indeed, much of the Bill is to do with secondary legislation. I shall do my best to concentrate on the Bill itself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, although I am aware of its relationship with such secondary legislation. We have already had a wide-ranging debate about the asylum and immigration system in general.
	First, I want to speak to clause 1, which deals with changes on appeal rights regarding variation of leave to enter or remain. The aspect that concerns me most is the proposal for someone given refugee status to have five years discretionary permission to stay—not indefinite leave, which applies at the moment. We actually introduced indefinite leave for refugees at the point at which they are given refugee status. Before 1998, even those given refugee status had to wait for four years before acquiring permanent permission to stay here. It was something that we did, and I have not yet seen any explanation of why the Government believe that there is any need to turn the clock back. We are not talking about huge numbers of people. The number given full refugee status is actually quite small, but for those people the provision amounts to an enormous change. It sits very badly with talk about the need to integrate refugees if, at the point when someone is given refugee status, they are not given security as well.
	A couple of weeks ago, I spoke to a psychiatrist in my local health authority who works with refugees. She told me about the difficulties faced by people who have gone through traumatic experiences and that she was able to start dealing effectively with their problems only from the point at which their status was confirmed. At the point that they acquired security, it became easier to deal with some of their other serious problems.
	I am not clear either what exactly the Government expect to happen at the end of the five-year period. People will still be given the right to family reunion at the point when they are given refugee status. Inevitably, after five years people will have families and children here—perhaps some children who were born here. We already know the sort of problems that will arise if we start telling those people that they are going to be forcibly returned to their countries of origin. I am not even clear that it will always be five years and I would be grateful if the Minister clarified that matter.
	I recently saw a presentation given to a number of organisations by Home Office staff trying to explain how the changes would be implemented. It was said that one of the factors that could lead to someone being returned was a change in the refugee's country of origin. The Home Office said that it envisaged a
	"system of declarations, to be used sparingly, that a country of origin has undergone fundamental change so that all grants to nationals of that country will be reviewed."
	It also said that cases might be reviewed individually at the end of the five-year period. The implication is that a decision will be made—presumably by the Home Office—that a country is safe to return to, and that people who have had less than five years here will be caught by that change. That will certainly cause insecurity for them.
	I am not clear about how the Bill will deal with people who have not been given full refugee status, but who have been given humanitarian protection. It appears to be the Government's intention that that will usually attract a five-year grant, rather than one of three years. At present, people given humanitarian protection cannot get a family reunion until three years have passed. I welcome the fact that the Bill means that they will be able to get family reunion rights as soon as they get humanitarian protection.
	If people are given family reunion rights and their families, spouses and children are encouraged to come here, the problems at the end of the five-year period will be multiplied if we tell them that those rights will be subject to review. I do not understand that logic at all. If we give people full refugee status, we recognise that they have been persecuted and need protection. Why, then, will we not give them the right to remain in this country?
	At present, unaccompanied minors are routinely given discretionary leave to stay until they are 18. Clause 1 will mean that they will not be able to appeal against a refusal of extension of that discretionary leave. That will have a significant impact, as they will lose some of the access to services that they had enjoyed previously. I do not see the necessity for that provision.
	Before I leave the subject of asylum, I note that many hon. Members have spoken in the debate about the need for good initial decision making and for getting things right at that stage. Apparently, the new asylum model to be introduced as a result of the five-year plan will rely to some extent on a process called "segmentation". Asylum seekers will be divided into nine queues, or streams, such as "late and opportunistic", with "low barriers to removal" or "high barriers to removal". Another category is for people designated as "high priority" with "low barriers to removal". Different reporting and detention regimes apply to the different streams into which people are divided.
	Deciding which stream is appropriate for people applying for asylum will almost certainly prejudge the final decision about their applications. If a person is put in the "late and opportunistic, low barriers to removal" queue, it is difficult to see how he or she can have much chance of proving an asylum claim. If we want better initial decisions, I question the wisdom of creating a model that is far too sophisticated and requires immediate decisions about where people are to go.
	Clause 4 deals with entry clearance appeals. It has already received much attention in the debate, so I shall be brief. However, I agree with what has been said about oral appeals for family visitors. The Tories abolished that right, but this Labour Government brought it back. The people who will be affected will be the families of British citizens—our constituents. Why is clause 4 necessary? Where is the abuse? I have seen no evidence that the system is being abused—quite the opposite, as the evidence is that oral appeals have a very high success rate. I do not regard that as abuse of the system, so where is the abuse that the removal of the oral appeal right is supposed to correct? If abuse exists, I hope that Ministers will say exactly what it is.
	Some other bits of the clause also concern me, although they have not received any attention so far. The existing immigration rules already allow Ministers to define family members. The present definition is fairly wide and includes relatives such as grandmother, granddaughter, brother, sister, uncle, aunt and nephew, but it is suggested that it is to be tightened up. Any such change will have implications for many communities in this country. I hope that Ministers will tell us exactly what is proposed. I do not want to find out when an order appears after six months and a Committee deals with the matter under the negative resolution procedure.
	Clause 4(3) is the sort of provision that we ought to be taking this opportunity to do away with. It states that a person
	"may not appeal . . . against a refusal of entry clearance if the decision . . . is taken on grounds which relate to a provision of immigration rules, and are specified for the purpose of this subsection by order of the Secretary of State."
	That gives enormous powers to the Secretary of State to decide, by order, who will have rights of appeal and who will not. The phrase "by order" means that there is never a proper debate of such matters in this House.
	I come now to the part of the Bill dealing with employment, and I welcome the fact that the employers of illegal immigrants will be targeted. People who employ illegal immigrants in large numbers know very well that they are breaking the law. I think that we ought to consider a variety of ways to deal with such people and not limit ourselves to powers under the immigration legislation. There is no doubt that people who employ illegal immigrants do not pay the minimum wage or national insurance, or fill in the proper VAT returns. I have reminded Ministers before that Al Capone went to gaol for tax evasion: there are always other ways to get at people if one's preferred approach proves more difficult than expected.
	As has been noted already, we must be very aware of the effects of the Bill on race relations. We do not have to think very hard to imagine who is likely to be asked to prove their ability to work. I am bothered by one aspect of clauses 11 and 9, taken together. Clause 11 will make it illegal to employ a person if his
	"leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom
	i) is invalid,
	ii) has expired, or
	iii) is subject to a condition preventing him from accepting the employment."
	I am sure that I am not the only hon. Member who frequently sees people with temporary or limited permission to enter the country who have made an application for an extension or for indefinite leave. Applications for the latter by people granted exceptional leave can take up to a year to be decided.
	At present, people granted exceptional leave who apply for indefinite leave retain their rights under the exceptional leave provision until a decision is made in respect of the application for indefinite leave. It is not just people who have appeals—it is people who have put in applications for extensions or to turn exceptional leave into indefinite leave. If clauses 9 and 11 are read in conjunction, it appears that someone in that position will no longer be entitled to work at the point at which their exceptional leave expires, and their employer will commit an offence if he continues to employ them. I do not know how people are supposed to keep track of the position. I hope that the Minister will either confirm that I am wrong or, if I am right, will consider how the clause can be amended to ensure that people do not suddenly lose the right to work, because that would cause them all sorts of problems.
	I am glad that clause 19 mentions a code of practice in consultation with the Commission for Racial Equality. The clause gives the Secretary of State scope to involve several other organisations and individuals, and perhaps the Minister could give us some examples.
	Clause 37 will allow local authorities to accommodate failed asylum seekers and others under section 4 support. Who will cover the costs? Will it be the local authority or will it all be administered through NASS? It is not clear how that will work in practice. People will not have the right to go to a local authority and request section 4 support. I assume that the decision that someone is eligible for section 4 support will still be taken by NASS and not by the local authority. Will there be some sort of contract between NASS and the local authority? There will be enormous scope for confusion, in the same way as when someone who has been supported by a local authority is transferred to NASS support. That problem also relates to clause 9. If people suddenly become overstayers as a result of waiting for an application to be dealt with, where should they go for support?
	My final point relates to detention facilities. The hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) made some excellent points about them. I reiterate the point that I raised with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about being clear that inspection by the prisons inspector will apply to all detention facilities. I would not be pleased to discover that such inspections would apply to Yarl's Wood and Harmondsworth, but not—for some reason—to Oakington, Dungavel, or another place that is used not for failed asylum seekers, but for asylum applicants. We also need to take control of the escort arrangements because there have been several serious allegations of assault.
	I have served on the Committees that have considered previous such Bills. Unfortunately, on occasion some very nasty surprises have been sprung on us late in the consideration. In 2002, for example, section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which removed all support from some in-country applicants, was put into the legislation at Committee stage in the Lords and received less than half an hour of consideration in this House, even though it was a major change. I hope that nothing like that will happen with this Bill.
	I hope that the Minister will respond to some of the concerns that have been raised this evening, especially on appeal rights. That section of the Bill raises the most concerns and I hope that we will be able to achieve some positive changes in Committee and on Report. Some aspects of the Bill are worrying. My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) mentioned voting against it. Well, if some of the measures are not amended by Third Reading, a few more colleagues will be thinking along the same lines.

Peter Lilley: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak after the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), who brought to bear his considerable expertise in an important speech that should be read in conjunction with the truly remarkable speech by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt). He highlighted how painful, sensitive and harrowing it can be to remove people from this country to a country as ghastly as Zimbabwe. The hon. Member for Walthamstow reminded us that those problems of removal increase the longer someone has been in this country. The longer the time, the more harrowing and difficult removal becomes.
	The hon. Gentleman also highlighted that, in a shameful move ahead of the election and in order to sound tough, the Government announced that there would be no automatic right of settlement after four years and no right of settlement at all for unskilled workers, effectively creating a category of guest worker. It sounded tough and perhaps popular in some quarters, but all hon. Members know that it has probably created an unworkable situation. The longer people have been here, the more they have established roots—they may have got married and had children—and removal becomes ever more difficult.
	We should remember the evidence that Dr. Teitelbaum gave to Congress on that point:
	"There is virtually no such thing as a temporary immigrant from a low wage economy to a high wage economy . . . Don't be tempted by the siren song of temporary worker programs. If they involve movement from poor countries to rich countries, they universally prove to be more permanent than temporary, and very difficult to turn off once turned on."
	I would add that they inevitably involve inhumanity if turned off. It is far more sensible and humane to limit immigration at the initial stage than to allow people to come here temporarily.
	Recent debates in this Chamber have been oversubscribed. It is remarkable that on such a controversial subject, we are not subject to a time limit and only a few Labour Members have wished to speak. Even on this side of the House, our numbers are limited. I cannot help feeling that that reflects people's reluctance to participate in debates about immigration because all too often those debates are curtailed by accusations of racism, which are freely bandied about and recklessly applied to anybody who implies that any greater restriction should be placed on immigration. When I became involved in the immigration issue—which was almost by accident, because I was studying the housing issue and discovered that housing policy was largely driven by Home Office immigration policy—I was warned by all my friends, who had let me be reckless enough to write pamphlets in favour of legalising cannabis, that I should not write about immigration. They said that I would be written off as a cranky libertarian or a dangerous racist. What I am about to say will probably have me written off on both counts.
	The Bill is about handling illegal migrants, failed asylum seekers, illegal entrants and those who have overstayed their visas. However, illegal immigration is simply the flipside of the lawful migration coin. The Government say that we need lawful migration because it is good for us. We need not just skilled people, but unskilled people. The Prime Minister has said that we need people to fill unskilled jobs that people living here are not prepared to do. We are told that lawful immigration increases the growth of our economy, and that the more there is, the faster it will grow. We are told that immigrants pay more in tax than they draw in benefits and other costs on the public sector, so the more immigration, the less tax the rest of us will have to pay. We are told that we need immigration to pay our future pensions, so the more immigrants we have, the fewer the difficulties of coping with the pension problem in the future.
	I shall discuss the credibility of those claims in a moment, but if they are true they imply that the more immigration there is, of both skilled and unskilled workers, the greater the benefits for the rest of us. The question inevitably arises, why, if economic migration is good for the rest of us, do the Government want to send back failed asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and over-stayers, who are, after all, economic migrants? The Government might say that it is a question of numbers; it is good for us, but there is a limit to the number that we can accommodate or absorb. However, they say that it is not a question of numbers. If it were, it would be natural and right to set a limit for that reason; but the Government say, no, there must be no limit to the numbers. They spent the whole of their election campaign ridiculing and opposing that idea. The Home Secretary and his predecessor said that there can be no upper limit to the number of immigrants who should be allowed into this country, and the current Home Secretary has said:
	"we want more immigration, more people coming to study, to work . . . to look for refuge".
	If immigration is a good thing, we have to ask whether we can have too much of it. I do not ask such questions rhetorically, so when I faced up to the problem I ended up writing a pamphlet entitled "Too much of a good thing?". When I started looking into the issues, my first conclusion was, if I am honest, not so much a conclusion as a prejudice. It came from living in areas with a high concentration of immigrants, from my experience and that of my neighbours and from working with immigrants as my constituents. I concluded that the overwhelming majority of immigrants are decent, hard-working, law-abiding people who come to this country wanting to better their lot and that of their families, and to make a positive contribution to the country. Most of them do. Indeed, to a large degree, they epitomise the very virtues of enterprise and family cohesion that Conservatives particularly admire, so we start off with a natural prejudice in favour of immigrants. We think of them as a good thing. We welcome those who are in the UK and we feel, as it were, at one with them.
	I then considered the Government's economic arguments in favour of large-scale immigration. There can certainly be no reason to oppose it on the grounds of the character of the people who want to come to this country, but what are the arguments for and against encouraging large-scale migration? The first remarkable thing I found was that almost no economists thought that there were substantial economic benefits from large-scale migration. I have to confess that when my pamphlet went to print, I had not read what is probably the definitive work on the subject, published last December in the Population and Development Review, by Coleman and Rowthorn, entitled "The Economic Effects of Immigration into the United Kingdom". Their conclusion was:
	"We conclude that the economic consequences of large-scale immigration are mostly trivial, negative or transient; that the interests of the more vulnerable sections of the domestic population may well be damaged; and that any small fiscal or other economic benefits are unlikely to bear comparison with immigration's substantial and permanent demographic and environmental impact. We demonstrate that such findings are in line with those from other developed countries".

Louise Ellman: Has the right hon. Gentleman compared the substance of the report from which he is quoting with the report published by the Home Office in 2002, which indicated that migrants contributed 10 per cent. more to this society than they actually cost it?

Peter Lilley: Yes I have, and it is fairly comprehensively demolished in the report that I have cited, which I urge the hon. Lady to read. I shall come to that point in due course and explain to her why that Home Office report was so unreliable.
	My conclusion was somewhat different from the one that I read out. I concluded that some immigration does enrich, and has enriched, this country both economically and culturally, but beyond a certain point the benefits of additional immigration do not rise with the number of people who come to the UK, whereas the costs and difficulties, especially the costs of extra housing and the pressure on land, rise in proportion to the numbers, so it is sensible and rational to set a limit.
	Let me use an analogy. Immigration acts as a lubricant for the economy, rather than a fuel. If we do not put oil in the car, it will not work well. If there is more than sufficient oil, the car will not go any better and too much oil may cause problems. To stop all immigration would be bad for the economy, but beyond a certain point increasing the amount of immigration does not make an economy grow any better. Immigration is a lubricant, but unfortunately the Government have been under the mistaken apprehension that it is a fuel. They put their foot on the accelerator and think that the more people we take into this country, the more we will grow. As a result, net lawful immigration has trebled under the Government; over the last six years it has averaged three times the level that they inherited.

Edward Miliband: I am listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman's speech and I feel that he is tilting at a straw man—the straw man of completely open borders. I do not think that either side of the House advocates the extreme position that he is taking in his argument.

Peter Lilley: I am merely pointing out the logic of the Government's position. The hon. Gentleman may say that as the Government are not logical we need not do that, but that is the inherent logic. If he had given a logical reason for restricting immigration—the Government may not have vouchsafed it, but he in his influential family position can tell us what it is—I would have welcomed it, but he has not done that.

Edward Miliband: rose—

Peter Lilley: I shall certainly give way to the hon. Gentleman—he is about to reveal all.

Edward Miliband: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way again. The question is whether we set an arbitrary limit, which is the idea of a quota, or whether we have an approach, such as the set of policies that the Government propose, so as to shape the number of people who come into the country—something that can be reconsidered and revised. I do not see an inconsistency in our position.

Peter Lilley: If there is no logical reason for having a limit, any limit will be arbitrary, but if the hon. Gentleman will not give us his reasons for having a limit, whether by process or by number, he is behaving irrationally or is advocating irrational policies.

Vincent Cable: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Peter Lilley: May I make a little progress? The hon. Gentleman may then find that I have answered his question, or at least added more substance and fuel to it.
	The main problem—certainly the one that brought me to the issue—the main cost, as it were, of large-scale immigration is the pressure of housing and land. The hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband) denied that that was a serious problem, but the Government themselves admitted, in an answer in the other place, that a third of all the households expected to be formed in future, for which housing will be necessary, are the result of net immigration to this country. Obviously, that excludes the figures for illegal immigration; if we made some estimates based on the recently published figures for illegal immigration, the number would probably be nearer 40 per cent. of all households in the United Kingdom. Net legal migration only is running at the rate of two constituencies a year, so two constituencies a year are being created in this country as a result of immigration.
	By 2031, the Government expect—again, excluding all illegal immigration and assuming a slowdown from the current level of immigration—an extra 5.2 million people net in this country, solely as a result of legal migration. Those are substantial numbers, which play an enormously important part in the housing pressures in southern England, because obviously the figures are suddenly more important. Of course the bulk of migration does not go directly to Hertfordshire, where I come from, or other home counties; it goes primarily to London. But the people who would have occupied the houses that are let, allocated or sold to the newcomers to London, move out to the home counties to get housing—they have to get it from somewhere. They do not leave because they do not like the newcomers—they themselves are Londoners of all ethnicities moving out to us. That is the process: a net inflow of about 150,000 a year, mostly into London; and a corresponding outflow to the home counties, requiring very substantial house building, about which the Government refuse to talk. As my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam)—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I have been listening with some interest to the right hon. Gentleman's remarks, clearly setting the background to this debate, but it would be helpful if he would now confine his remarks rather more to the context of the Bill under discussion.

Peter Lilley: I shall certainly follow your ruling, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Bill is about controlling immigration, and I am trying to find reasons for doing it. If we cannot find them, we cannot have a Bill, so I am sure that you would agree that we need to do so.
	I was hoping to find in the Bill a fulfilment of the promise that the Government made just before the election: that they would establish an independent commission to advise on how much immigration was necessary and desirable. Sadly, I can find no such reference in the Bill, but such a commission would, I hope, analyse the arguments in favour of more large-scale immigration and see whether they were justified. If they were, we would have that advice; if not, we would obviously have even more need for the controls and restrictions inherent in the Bill.
	The Prime Minister said that according to the Treasury, our economic growth rate would be 0.5 per cent. lower a year if net migration ceased. Lower growth, he said, means less individual prosperity. But economic growth is the sum of the growth in the number of workers and the growth in output per worker. The Treasury model, about which the Prime Minister was talking, says that immigration will add 0.5 per cent. to the growth in the number of workers, but will not increase output per worker, and it is only if output per head goes up that we get richer. So even on the figures that the Prime Minister quoted, he merely showed that we shall have a bigger economy, not a richer economy, and when he said that growth meant more individual prosperity, he was simply treating the facts with his normal discombobulation.
	The hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) asked about the study that showed that the immigrant community makes a net fiscal contribution to this country. The report that she mentioned, which I happen to have, says:
	"Migrants in the UK contributed . . . a net fiscal balance of approximately £2.5 billion . . . This is equivalent to around 1p on the basic rate of income tax"
	for the rest of us. When we look at the figures, we find that that was a year when the Budget was in surplus. Not just immigrants were paying more in than they were taking out; the whole population was paying more in than it was taking out. When we allow for that fact, half of that £2.5 billion disappears. The other problem was that the study attributed to both immigrants and non-immigrants in proportion to their shares of the population the taxes paid by foreign owners of companies. If we take that out, and if we also allow for something that the authors of the study wholly ignored—the biggest single item, probably: the accruing pension liabilities of members of the immigrant population who are disproportionately below retirement age—all that gain disappears and turns into a net deficit.
	But I am not particularly arguing that immigrants are a burden, just that it is absurd to say that they are reducing the tax burden on everybody else. Rich people pay more taxes than they receive in benefits from the state, whether they be immigrants or previously resident people. Poor people, on the whole, pay less in to the state than they take out, whether they are immigrants or are born here. It is silly to aggregate them all. If one wants to use immigrants as a fiscal milch cow, one will obviously limit those coming here to high earners, but that is on the whole a rather unattractive policy.

Louise Ellman: Does the right hon. Gentleman discount the contribution made by immigrants to the economy generally by providing skilled services, which are often scarce, and their wider contribution to society as a whole? He seems to be relating his comments only to fiscal matters and discounting the general contribution that immigrants can and do make to society.

Peter Lilley: Everybody in society makes a contribution to everybody else. In a free market society we are all exchanging goods and services and we are all mutually interdependent, and that is a wonderful thing. But if the hon. Lady is referring to the shortages argument—effectively to the Prime Minister's statement that
	"There are half a million vacancies in our job market and our . . . economy needs migration to fill these vacancies",
	she is referring to the same misunderstanding of how economies work. Since the Prime Minister first referred to there being half a million vacancies which we need immigrants to fill, half a million immigrants have come to this country, and there are still half a million vacancies to be filled. That is not a coincidence; it is inevitable in a well-working economy, because immigrants not only produce goods and services but consume them, and the value of the goods and services that they produce is equal to the value of the goods and services that they consume. Also, in consuming goods and services they create demand for an equal net further inflow of workers, and that is why, in countries like our own where we have had a net inflow, there is still the same level of vacancies. The same is true of California, and of west Germany.

Edward Miliband: rose—

Peter Lilley: If the hon. Gentleman wants to display his economic ignorance yet again, he is welcome to intervene.

Edward Miliband: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way, but not for the manner in which he did it. I want to make a comparison with the late 1980s and early 1990s, when we saw a tightening labour market, leading to inflation taking off—I genuinely say this in a non-partisan way—and all the consequent problems that we saw in our economy. Does he not think that the continued buoyancy of our labour market combined with subdued inflation has something to do with the fact that in the south-east in particular, jobs have been filled by people coming from overseas?

Peter Lilley: The—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I really must intervene again. We do not want an academic debate on immigration, interesting though that may be, but a debate on the contents of the Bill.

Peter Lilley: Well, Prime Minister—I am elevating you, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Bill was promised in the election, and it was promised in the Queen's Speech as fulfilling the election pledges, one of which was to bring in an Australian-style points system. Would I be in order if I were to address that, even though it is not in the Bill? It ought to be in the Bill, and the terms of the Bill will be used to enforce such a system if it is introduced via secondary legislation.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Certainly, if the right hon. Gentleman feels that certain aspects are not in the Bill that should be, discussion of them would be in order.

Peter Lilley: I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for that ruling. I will therefore briefly refer to those aspects, which relate back to issues that we were discussing.
	The Government have promised an Australian-style points system as their way to limit immigration. At least, that is how they presented such a system at the election. Of course, the Australian-style points system included a numerical limit and a system of taking the immigrants with the maximum number of points up to that limit. That is how it operated. The idea of the points system without that numerical limit makes little sense.
	My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary asked rhetorically—I was almost tempted to intervene at that stage—how a points system would work without an annual limit. We know how, because the Government have already put one in place. It is called the highly skilled migrant programme. They assess the points needed to be granted permission to enter this country. They set up the system; they set a level of points; and they found that they got a disappointingly low number of applicants. So what did they do? They reduced the number of points that people needed to be allowed into the country, until they got a welcome increase. Indeed, they were swamped by the increase, and they are now six months behind in processing applications.
	When the Government establish a points system, they manipulate the points to increase the number of people coming to this country—not, as they implied at the election, to reduce the number of people coming here. I am therefore extremely suspicious of any such proposals, unless a quantitative limit is imposed. I hope that the Government will progress that proposal, if not during consideration in Committee, subsequently by secondary legislation, and that they will progress their promise to introduce an independent commission to establish to what extent we need large-scale immigration into this country from an economic point of view.
	I am confident that such a commission would work if it were genuinely independent, not employer based, as the Government rather laughingly suggest. Employers will always want to employ cheap labour from abroad; there will be a demand for that. There is an almost limitless supply of people whom they could bring in from abroad in almost any profession, except possibly those that depend on fluency in the English language and familiarity with our systems, and employ at lower rates of pay than they need to provide for people from this country. Therefore, one wants a commission to be established that will make the assessment on a economic basis, rather than on a desire to undercut the pay levels of the people who are already here.
	One way or another, we need to hear from the Government the reasons why they put any limit on immigration. We can then establish what that limit logically should be. We can then determine how the terms and tightening of the rules on appeals and so on in the Bill will apply at that limit, and in doing so, I, like everyone else, would want those rules applied as humanely, sensitively and rapidly as possible to minimise the harshness and damage that was highlighted so eloquently earlier in the debate by my hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire.

Louise Ellman: It is very important that the Bill is discussed in the context of the Government's five-year plan for asylum and immigration. In the Bill and in that plan, there are a number of positive measures that I support. Those measures are extremely important and relate particularly to trying to reduce exploitation and trafficking. It is right that they are tough, and perhaps they need to be made increasingly tough.
	I wish to concentrate my remarks about the Bill and its context on two issues that are of great concern to me. Indeed, my comments have been made in a similar way by other contributors during the debate, but I wish to add my remarks because those issues are extremely important. They relate particularly to two aspects of policy: first, the proposals on restricting appeals; and, secondly, what amounts to a fundamental change of policy in how refugees are dealt with.
	One of my concerns about that fundamental change in policy on how people who are acknowledged to have a well-founded fear of persecution are treated is that, while the consequences of the change in policy are dealt with in the Bill, the change of policy itself does not appear in the Bill and therefore cannot be voted on, although it can be debated.
	The change that I refer to is the proposal to end the policy of granting indefinite leave to remain to people who are accepted as refugees—people for whom there is a well-founded fear of persecution—and to substitute it with permission to stay in this country for up to five years for new cases. The people concerned may be returned to their country of origin, depending on whether circumstances have changed in that country.
	I am extremely disturbed by that fundamental change of policy. Everyone who has any involvement with refugees knows how strong those refugees' emotions are. They know how often those people have suffered not only fear but perhaps torture in their countries of origin, how strongly they wish to make a new life and want the stability of a decision that gives them the certainty that they will be able to make a new life. They know that, if someone may have to return to their country of origin, where they may have been tortured and persecuted—a fact that has been recognised by the granting of refugee status—they can be in constant fear, which can be extremely harmful.
	To say that someone who is accepted as a refugee can stay for up to only five years, depending on what happens in their country of origin, not only produces more instability for people who want to make a new start in their lives, but can be extremely traumatic for children. Five years can be a very long time in the life of a child. If a young child has come to this country as part of a family of refugees, is at school here, making friends and doing well in the education system, as often happens with refugees, it can be extremely traumatic for them to be told that they have to return, and that is even more traumatic for their parents. That is a matter of great concern.
	We should also consider whether circumstances have changed in the refugee's country of origin. If there has been a change, how is it known that there will not be a further change to the detriment of the refugee? In countries such as Iran, Somalia and, indeed, many others, we know that there can be constant changes in situation. At some point in five years, there might be a change in the situation even though it is said that a refugee ought to return. What would happen if that person is returned and, a short time afterwards, the instability of those regimes leads to another change and the returned refugee faces persecution again?
	This is a very profound change of policy, and if the Government wish to introduce it, they should include it in the Bill so that it can be voted on. We can certainly all debate and discuss that change, but it is wrong to include in legislation something with such drastic implications without including it in the Bill. I ask the Minister to think again about that change.
	The other issue about which I have great concern is mentioned in the Bill, although it is not clear whether the extent of the change in policy is included in the Bill. The change relates to the restriction and, in some cases, removal of rights of appeal. Perhaps I should say the additional continuing restriction of rights of appeal because rights of appeal were reduced by previous legislation. It is clear from what happens in practice when people apply for permission to come to this country, not only for asylum, but to work, to be with their families, or to study, that in too many cases it is easy for important facts to be omitted and for errors to be made. Subjective judgments are inevitable. The right of appeal is thus extremely important so that a case can be reappraised if facts have been put wrongly, if significant omissions have occurred during judgment, or if judgments have been faulty.
	The right of appeal is also important to ensure that the scrutiny of decisions can be undertaken. Reference has already been made to the high number of successful appeals. The fact that more than 56 per cent. of appeals on entry clearance are successful throws doubt on the reliability of initial decisions. If the right of appeal is to be removed, the scrutiny of such original decisions, many of which are questionable, will be removed as well. It is clear from reports by the independent monitor and the National Audit Office that the quality of initial decisions needs greater attention, but nothing in the Bill will improve that quality. There is simply a desire to remove or withdraw rights of appeal, which I find disturbing.
	I am greatly concerned that it is not clear from the Bill to what extent appeal rights will be removed. Ministers will be able to make orders and put forward secondary legislation, so it is unclear whether the categories for the withdrawal of appeal rights designated under the Bill will be exclusive, or the beginning of a wholesale reduction of the important rights of appeal. I would like to hear the Minister's views on that.
	Many hon. Members could cite examples of cases with which they have dealt in which rights of appeal proved to be extremely important. I shall cite just two examples that illustrate my point. In one case, Dr. A, a prestigious medical person, wished to visit this country on a work-related visit involving members of his family. He had a sponsor with financial security. Owing to the person's specific situation, the sponsor arranged the detail of the proposed visit. At interview, Dr. A was unable to answer questions about the precise detail of his visit to the UK because that detail was being organised by his sponsor, so he was refused permission for his visit. It was only when that fact was pointed out on appeal that the visit was granted. In that case, a proposed visitor appeared to be unable to answer a question of significance without the questioner understanding why he could not answer it, although the matter was easily clarified on appeal.
	I cite a further case. A young lady, Miss B, is extremely ill with a life-threatening disease. She requires constant care and is extremely unhappy and desperate. She wants her mother, who lives in the far east, to come to stay with her, so it would not be a normal visit because its purpose would be to allow the mother to look after her daughter. At interview, the mother, who was extremely distraught, was unable to answer clearly questions from the interviewer about the length of time that she wished to spend in the country or to give precise details of her daughter's illness. Medical evidence now clearly shows the nature of the illness and we know that the mother was unable to answer detailed questions because she was too distraught about her situation. The matter is still being reviewed, so that shows why it is important to have an appeals procedure.
	The Home Secretary spoke about the importance of immigration at the start of the debate. Indeed, he said that we welcome immigrants who come within the rules of this country. I support what he said because I welcome immigrants coming to this country, whether they be asylum seekers with a well-founded fear of persecution, or people who wish to work in this country and contribute to it. I am worried that the Bill and the context in which it is put, with restrictions on appeal rights and the drastic change to the treatment of people who are recognised as refugees, sends out the very different message that refugees and immigrants are not so welcome. I accept that that message might meet with populist support, but it is not consistent with the Home Secretary's words or my views.
	I ask the Minister to comment on the points that I have raised in his winding-up speech and to think about them again in Committee. They might be points of detail, but they are also points of substance about matters that cause me great concern. I listened carefully to the speeches made by my hon. Friends the Members for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) and for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) and associate myself with their comments. I, too, will be looking closely at what happens to the Bill in Committee. I support a diverse, multicultural society. I oppose the exploitation and abuse of immigration laws, so I support strong measures to deal with that. However, I also want fairness, and I am worried that the measures that I have discussed in my speech are not about fairness, even though they might be populist.

Charles Walker: Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I assure you that there will be no academic arguments from me—I leave those to my hon. Friends.
	As hon. Members on both sides of the House have pointed out, this country has a proud tradition of taking people in from abroad. We benefit from foreign doctors, nurses, teachers and, of course, bankers, so there are many positive aspects to immigration. However, many of the advantages that immigration brings to this country are being obscured by a system that is still widely perceived to be failing. It is incumbent on all elected politicians in the Chamber to find a way forward that restores public confidence in our immigration and asylum system.
	I am worried that if we fail to fix the system, many more constituencies throughout the country will be faced with the problems that we currently experience in Broxbourne with the British National party. As many hon. Members are aware, the BNP uses the problems surrounding this country's immigration system as an active campaigning tool to recruit people to its standard. Whether appealing to Conservative or Labour voters, the BNP message is the same: "The established parties don't care who comes to this country. They want to create a free-for-all at your expense." Thankfully, most people still have nothing to do with that nonsense. Their concerns about immigration are far outweighed by their dislike for the BNP and its hateful policies, but we cannot rely indefinitely on the good sense of the British public to keep the BNP at bay. We must also do our bit as their elected representatives.
	The BNP already has a councillor in Broxbourne and at the last general election it managed to double its vote to 2,000. It came within a whisker of saving its deposit. Our one major success was that we stopped it doubling its representation on Broxbourne council by taking the second seat in Rosedale ward. However, the BNP remains a threat. In my constituency, it is well organised, works hard on the ground and has the capacity to draw in activists from across the region. Its campaigning techniques are aggressive and at times intimidating. As one constituent said to me, "It's hard to slam the door in their face when they've got their bodies in the way."
	The BNP message is deeply depressing and makes no concession to the truth. Every black or Asian face in the community belongs to an illegal immigrant, with no distinction made. We worked hard to beat the BNP in Rosedale. We had an excellent local candidate, Dave Lewis—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should confine his remarks to the content of the Bill, interesting and important though his comments are.

Charles Walker: My experiences of Broxbourne confirmed to me that the BNP must not and cannot be dismissed lightly. It has tapped into a seam of disquiet and will continue to mine it as long as we allow it to do so. Hon. Members can only imagine the collective cheer that went up from Nick Griffin and his mates when the Prime Minister was forced to admit that he had no real idea how many illegal immigrants currently reside in the UK. Statements like that are the stuff of BNP fantasies. They are the oxygen of its recruitment drives and provide a rich source of text for its leaflets. They allow Nick Griffin to say, "I was right. Your Government, your elected politicians are no longer in control. The things that matter to you don't matter to them."
	If the House is genuinely committed to stemming the rise of the BNP, we must ensure that an immigration system is put in place that carries the confidence of the British people. It must be seen to be fair and transparent. The system must make room for genuine asylum seekers while rewarding those immigrants who follow our laws.
	The next time there is a general election, I want to be able to look my constituents in the eye and reassure them that their Government, whoever it may be—but it will probably be this one—have taken control of this country's ports of entry, making it almost impossible for people to enter the UK illegally.

Stephen Pound: You heard it here first.

Charles Walker: I assume that this Government are not going to give up and go home before the next general election is called.
	I want to be able to tell my constituents that the Government will only allow people into this country who are in genuine fear of their life or who have applied through the correct legal channels, and that the emphasis is on quality not quantity, so that the people coming to this country bring with them scarce skills that can be put to immediate use. I also want to be able to tell them that those people who have entered this country illegally are being identified and removed swiftly. If I can tell my constituents those things, the BNP in Broxbourne will have reached its high watermark on 5 May 2005. If we beat the BNP and erode its support base, we will have done something meaningful to improve the lives of those people who are seeking to start afresh on our shores. We will draw the poison of racism from our communities, ensuring that the British traits of tolerance and compassion continue to carry the day.

Stephen Williams: I want to return to the content of the Bill, in particular the remarks of the hon. Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) on the removal of the right to appeal against the decisions of an entry clearance officer, as contained in clause 4. I also want to focus on international students, the subject of many interventions earlier in the debate.
	The hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) said that 120 vice-chancellors wrote a letter that appeared in the Financial Times today, expressing their dismay at the content of clause 4 and many other aspects of policy, including the Government's recent decisions to tighten the entry clearance obligations faced by international students. I raised with the Secretary of State for Education and Skills the subject of visa fees as part of the system, including the unwelcome signal that the rise in fees sends to international students. The Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality mouths, "Rubbish." I accept that the amount of the fee may not be an economic barrier in relation to the tuition fee that the student pays. None the less, it is indicative of the Government's approach that they are making it harder for international students to apply to study in this country. Although the fees themselves may not be an economic barrier, the removal of the right to appeal against an entry clearance officer's decision is a barrier to students coming to this country, and there is a danger that we will lose them to other countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, which are all competing for that key international business.
	The hon. Members for Ealing, Southall (Mr. Khabra) and for Leicester, East referred to the huge powers that entry clearance officers have under our current immigration system. Their decisions can certainly be made on subjective grounds. The removal of the right of appeal against such decisions effectively makes an entry clearance officer infallible, and his decisions or the grounds on which it has been made cannot be challenged. I have only been the MP for Bristol, West for two months, so I cannot match the experience of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), who has debated five immigration Bills and has undertaken years of constituency work. In those two short months, however, I have certainly learned something from the vast majority of people who come to my constituency surgery. More than three quarters of them come to see me about immigration cases, and I have learned that entry clearance officers often make ludicrous decisions. They are certainly not infallible.
	My hon. Friends the Members for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) and for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) referred to the evidence presented by the university of Sheffield, which found that 90 per cent. of initial refusals of permission to study in this country by entry clearance officers are overturned on appeal or, more likely, once the facts are clarified before an appeal is even heard. If there is no right of appeal, a process to examine the facts will not be initiated, so many cases will be closed at the outset and the individuals concerned will study elsewhere. This morning, the Minister conceded that 1,200 appeals—I think that I heard him correctly—by students under the existing legislation were upheld last year. If clause 4 eventually stands part of the Bill no appeals will be upheld, and gross injustices will be suffered by numerous individuals who might otherwise come to this country. Studying here would benefit them directly but it would also benefit us.
	There are 3,200 international students at the university of Bristol and the university of the west of England. They make a huge contribution not only to those universities but to Bristol's cultural life and economy. If the clause remains in the Bill, there is a serious risk that British universities' research base would be damaged irreparably, particularly in science and engineering, which are important for the aerospace industries in Bristol. I hope that in Committee the Government will reconsider clause 4 in the light of our proposals.

Daniel Kawczynski: My grandfather came to this country in 1940 with many Polish airmen and servicemen. This country has a tremendous tradition of allowing people to come here when they are in need. People came here during the war to fight in the battle of Britain, but afterwards they were allowed to stay, because communism had descended on their countries of origin and they would have been at peril had they returned. We have built up a tradition of tolerance and of looking after people in need from other countries, and I am very grateful for that.
	The Bill does not address the changes that are taking place to immigration to this country or the changing nature of immigration. It does not address the position of the 500,000 or so people who are illegal immigrants in the United Kingdom. It does not state how those people are to be identified and how they will be deported. Those are important issues. There has been little discussion about improving the method of dispersal of asylum centres. Recently, the Government proposed to place an asylum centre in a tiny village in Shropshire, close to Shrewsbury. That caused great distress to the local villagers and a great deal of anguish. The Bill does not explain how the asylum processing system will be improved so that there will be no need for such asylum centres in the future.
	There are countries in Europe that are tackling the issue—for example, Denmark, which is a socially liberal country and has had a Labour Government for many years since the war. Denmark has a quota on immigrants and a proper policy, and it has recently started to tackle the problem of illegal immigration. There is nothing in the Bill about a quota on the number of immigrants allowed into our country. Denmark's policies have been praised by many national institutions.
	There has been little discussion of how to deal with the long-term reasons for illegal immigration. The Home Office is tinkering at the edges and making a few changes in our country, whereas it should be working with the Foreign Office to get countries around the world to take responsibility. I was visiting the Kenya-Somalia border when there was a crisis in Somalia. I have never seen anything like the treatment by the Kenyan authorities of refugees who wanted to escape persecution in Somalia and reach the first free country. They were turned away. Some were brutally pushed away. Kenya and other democratic countries must take responsibility for helping with refugees. At present, people from Somalia are getting on a plane and coming to the United Kingdom. That is what the Government should be dealing with.
	The source of illegal immigration must be tackled. The Prime Minister recently visited Tripoli and had a meeting with Colonel Gaddafi. I hope he uses that communication with the President of Libya to make sure that that country takes responsibility for stopping all the illegal immigrants who pour into Libya from neighbouring sub-Saharan countries and use Libyan ports to get across the Mediterranean in a clandestine way to places like Italy, Malta and France and from there to the United Kingdom. There should be more joined-up government. The issue is one for the Home Office and the Foreign Office to work on together.
	Finally, I welcome the proposals to tighten the rules on the employment of illegal immigrants. We had a case in Shrewsbury of somebody employing people illegally. They were housed in stables fit only for horses. It was an appalling case. It did not happen in London or some major conurbation. It happened in a tiny village called Dorrington, just south of Shrewsbury, so the problem occurs even in rural areas. The conditions in which those people were held were dreadful, yet, as we have heard, there have been few convictions. There have been 24 prosecutions since 1998 and only nine convictions of people illegally employing illegal immigrants. I do not see how the Bill will tackle that problem.

Lee Scott: In the two months since I was honoured to be elected as Member of Parliament for Ilford, North, I have had more than 100 immigration and asylum cases to deal with, and I hope that this Bill will address some of the problems that my constituents have been experiencing.
	We must deal with people in a fair manner and with compassion and common sense, but also quickly. In several of the cases that I am dealing with, some of which I have inherited, it is a question not so much of 13 weeks but of 13 months, and I sincerely hope that it does not become 13 years. One case involves a lady who has been given leave to stay, as has her younger child, but her older child is still waiting for it. Can that be right? Some cases involve people who wished to visit for relatives' weddings and have shown the necessary proof but have missed the occasion because they were never given their entry visas.
	Does the Home Office have enough staff to deal with these cases? I do not wish to get anyone into trouble, but during a recent phone call to inquire about one of my constituents, I was told that it was inundated and could not cope. Will the Minister look into that as a matter of urgency and ensure that more staff, properly paid, are dealing with these cases to try to clear the backlog? I do not wish to sit in judgment on whether someone should stay in this country, but I do believe that out of respect for them we should deal with their case quickly and let them know where they stand.
	Why is the Home Office getting things so wrong? Is it because the numbers are so vast? If I have had 100 cases—I accept that not every Member of Parliament will have had that number—that must mean that thousands of cases have come in over the past eight weeks. Multiplied over the year, that is 96,000 cases.
	On 6 June, the Law Society issued a press release that says:
	"Poor decision making by the Immigration Service combined with changes to the law could prevent significant numbers of people from visiting their families".
	We must tackle this. It cannot be right that people cannot visit their own families who are allowed to stay in this country.
	The Labour party's immigration policy says:
	"We will support family life by admitting the spouses and minor dependent children of those already settled in the UK. We will ensure that the asylum decisions are both swift and fair and fully meet the UK's obligation towards refugees under international law. And we will detect and remove those entering and remaining in the UK without authority and take firm action against those profiting from abuse of the immigration laws, including effective preventative measures."
	The current system is not working; it is in chaos. I hope that the Bill will go a long way towards tackling that, but I fear that it will not.

Vincent Cable: I start by referring to the excellent speech by the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), particularly now that he is back in his seat. He struck a chord with me when he explained his dilemma in wanting to vote against the Bill. Like him, I am a serial loyalist—indeed, in my party I am the payroll vote—so I would find it difficult to bring myself to vote against it. However, I share many of his reservations.
	I have three points to make: first, a point relating to administrative procedures and processes; secondly, a personal point; and thirdly, a point to do with economics. Although I disagreed with much of what the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) said on the latter subject, he introduced an element of rigour into the arguments that was hitherto lacking.
	The hon. Member for Leicester, East is absolutely right that the issue of processes and procedures is a useful place to start, and it is where we start as constituency MPs. My constituency has only a small ethnic minority population—just under 10 per cent.—but well over half my casework concerns immigration and asylum. There is something fundamentally odd and very wrong about that. It takes that form for two reasons. The first is that there are enormous problems with administrative hold-ups, which the hon. Member for Leicester, East described, such as the four-year expiry of exceptional leave to remain, the 13-week letters and so on. Members of Parliament are constantly drawn into problems that arise simply from administrative slowness and inefficiency in the immigration and nationality directorate.
	The second reason is more important and more directly related to the Bill—it is the functioning of entry clearance officer procedures. It is important to stress, especially in the context of the Bill, that we are considering not immigrants or asylum seekers, but visitors—people who want to visit their families or visit the country as students or temporary workers on a work permit. We are worried about the procedures that apply to them. Like the hon. Member for Leicester, East, I have many cases in which entry clearance officers—I am sure that they are perfectly honourable, highly efficient British servants, who are trying to do their best—make decisions that are often arbitrary and subjective. That is the nature of the decisions that they are required to make.
	I get more and more rejection forms, which probably relate to people who spent a couple of days travelling to Delhi, Bombay or Islamabad and paid a large sum for a visa. It is clear from the documentation that they have been impeccable in their application, whether it is for a family or a study visit. All their sponsors are lined up and their colleges have produced authentic documents. However, entry clearance officers often conclude that they find it impossible to believe that people of such modest means would wish to return to their country. The purpose of the appeal is to challenge that sort of subjective judgment. We have heard of many cases, especially in relation to student visas, for which the right of appeal is a crucial discipline.
	Several hon. Members—the hon. Members for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) and for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) intervened to make the crucial point—said that if we are trying to improve the quality of the initial decisions, the best way of doing that is to ensure that there is provision for an appeal so that the quality of the argument is improved from the outset. The loss of the appeal mechanism is a crucial and negative aspect of the Bill.
	I want to make a personal point that goes back a long time. I first became concerned about the trend in British immigration legislation almost 40 years ago. I can trace that concern back to a specific day—21 July 1968, the day I got married in Nairobi. I was a British man marrying a British woman, but I happened to be white and she happened to be Asian. She is now dead after many years of happy marriage. A few weeks after we were married, a law was rushed through the British Parliament that effectively declared not her—because she was married to me—but her family and most of her friends stateless. They were British citizens but they were arbitrarily deprived of their entry rights. Some of her family eventually got here and made a major contribution to education and business, but most of them were scattered to the winds, to other parts of the world, where they contributed to those societies.
	That experience was important because it taught me that we have immigration panics every few years in this country. A wave of emotion flows through Parliament, a populist politician and the press, and there is a call for something to be done. I remember reading articles almost 40 years ago in the context of the Kenyan Asians about our overcrowded island. The question of how we could cope with a few thousand more people was asked. The population then was about 10 million fewer, but it was still an overcrowded island and "something had to be done." Legislation was rushed through, by a Labour Government then, that deprived a specific group of people, put them under immigration controls and removed an appeal here and there, and the process has continued ever since. The Bill is yet another response to that sort of emotional pressure. There will be another one four, five or six years down the line.
	I want to consider the economic aspect of the measure. Now that the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden has returned, perhaps I can compliment him on trying to introduce some rigour into the argument. He is right that many of the economic arguments for immigration are often spurious and superficial. It was important that the Home Secretary started his speech with the rather bold assertion that Britain needs economic migration. I happen to agree with him, but that case is often casually put and not properly argued. I think that the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Edward Miliband) got the argument right on about his fourth attempt, when he said that an economy can run at a much higher level of capacity if it has people coming in who are flexible and entrepreneurial and who can change their working patterns and move around. These things are very difficult to quantify, but the Governor of the Bank of England—hardly an economically illiterate man—has attested to the fact that the British economy is able to function at a significantly higher level of activity than it would be able to without the current flow of immigration.

Peter Lilley: How does the hon. Gentleman explain the experience of the German economy, which, despite a very large inflow of migrant labour both from East Germany and from Germans returning from all over eastern Europe and Russia, seems not to have the buoyancy that he believes such an inflow has caused us?

Vincent Cable: The German economy has many problems. One could argue that macro-economic mismanagement and, above all, an extreme rigidity and lack of flexibility have cancelled out many of the benefits that the immigrant work force might have brought. Germany certainly flourished in the post-war period on the back of a great many immigrant workers. However, Madam Deputy Speaker, you have pointed out that you do not want us to go too far down that road, so I shall restrict my comments specifically to the Bill.
	The Government have not addressed the fundamental question of the economics of immigration. They have tried to make a distinction simply between the legal and the illegal, and want to bring in new powers to clamp down on racketeers. I think that we would all broadly endorse that, but it has been pointed out that powers already exist in the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996—they were strengthened in the 1999 Act—to deal with racketeering and the serious abuse of immigration rules. They have rarely been invoked, and it is difficult to see what the new legislation could add that would be helpful.
	Indeed, many aspects of the Bill are very worrying. Employers already have to go through a substantial process of compliance in order to meet the employment requirements of the 1996 and 1999 Acts. When we debated the Bill that became the 1999 Act—I served on its Standing Committee—it was pointed out to us by employers associations that to be fully compliant, a company had to carry out approximately 50 tests to establish that all its employees were compliant with visa and other immigration requirements. That was an enormously difficult administrative task.
	What is crucial about this new piece of legislation is that it will penalise companies even if they are unwittingly employing illegal immigrants. The Home Secretary did not make that point. He concentrated on the deliberate criminal abuse of the immigration rules, but he did not stress the key new element of the Bill, namely, that such unwitting behaviour by employers will lay them open to substantial charges. I can see no reference to a regulatory impact assessment of the Bill. Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether one has been, or is going to be, carried out, so that we can have some idea of the implications for employers who are going to go through this process.
	Because the process is difficult, particularly for small and medium-sized firms, many of them will, understandably, take the safest course of action when faced with someone with dark skin or a foreign accent who is looking for a job—they will simply not employ them. Of course, that will then open them up to challenges under race discrimination legislation. The balance that will have to be struck in order to deal with this problem is, I believe, going to be set out in a code of conduct, but none of us knows what it contains. Some very worrying conflicts could arise for perfectly law-abiding, fair-minded employers.
	In addition, companies will face a new set of charges, which will be set according to civil, rather than criminal, proof. It will be easy to impose a charge on an employer on an allegation that they have unwittingly hired an illegal immigrant. That is a potential nightmare for law-abiding employers and hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized companies that do not have the capacity to engage in sophisticated compliance. At an early stage, we need a proper statement from the Government about the implications for the employer.
	I want to support the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Stephen Williams) about students. It is clear that overseas students make an enormous contribution to British universities, both intellectually and financially. They account, I think, for about 10 per cent. of undergraduates and 38 per cent. of postgraduates. What is worrying is that Britain is already seeing a significant slowdown in the number of overseas students coming here, contrary to the Prime Minister's expressed ambition to make Britain a magnet for overseas students. There are several reasons for that, such as the world economy, trends in countries such as China, visa fees and the additional deterrent of the removal of appeals in student visa applications. As I pointed out in an intervention, if universities in this country see their source of income from overseas students drying up or substantially decreasing, they might have no alternative but to resort to other sources of income generation, the most important of which is top-up fees. Universities will come under great pressure from their vice-chancellors to demand much higher top-up fees than we have seen so far. That is one of the unintended consequences of this tightening-up of immigration control legislation.
	Many aspects of the Bill worry me and I would be tempted to vote against it were there a consensus, but I think that we will all be well-behaved and abstain. There are many sources of concern, however, and I trust that at least some of them will be resolved before Third Reading.

Humfrey Malins: It is always a great pleasure to address a full House, and tonight is no exception. [Laughter.] We have had a good debate, with some excellent contributions from both sides of the House and from all political parties. Perhaps we have more in common in terms of our approach to certain issues than might be thought outside. It is good to have a debate conducted in a good-tempered, constructive way, which contrasts with the inflammatory approaches sometimes presented in the newspapers.
	Briefly, I want to thank some of my hon. Friends for their contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) spoke for the whole House when he said how important it was that the asylum and immigration system should carry the confidence of the people. He was right to express his opposition, reflected throughout the House, to the British National party and everything that it stands for.
	I enjoyed the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), who spoke movingly of his experience of the treatment of refugees on the Kenyan-Somalian border. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mr. Scott) said rightly that dealing with applications quickly was important, as it would demonstrate our respect for those who make an application. My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) was absolutely right to allude to the need for more efficiency and less legislation, to which I shall refer shortly.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) said that he wondered whether he would be accused of being—I hope that I have his words right—a "cranky libertarian" or a "dangerous racist". The truth of the matter is that he stands accused of being neither. His was a powerful speech from a colleague who knows the subject deeply, always speaks in measured tones, and from whom we have come to learn a great deal in recent months on this topic.
	My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt) made a moving and powerful speech, which held the attention of all in the House. His track record over the years of commitment to his constituency and issues involving the Yarl's Wood centre is well established, well known and much admired, and his observations about the Zimbabwe detainees moved the whole House. We were extremely pleased that he was able to make such an excellent contribution to the debate, and I thank him for it.
	A number of Labour Members spoke—not always, I must say, in support of the Government. I was particularly pleased to hear from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher), who always speaks in a decent, humane and knowledgeable fashion. The expertise of the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) in these matters is extremely well known and is matched only by his commitment to his constituents, which he has demonstrated for many years. He and many other speakers raised constituency issues. That shows that all Members—the hon. Gentleman is a shining example—take asylum and immigration issues raised by their constituents very seriously, and do their best to deal with them.
	The hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) is extremely knowledgeable about such issues. He made me smile, because he said more or less what I was going to say: serving on a Standing Committee considering an asylum Bill is very ageing. The hon. Gentleman has been doing it for a long time, and I feel that I have—and I have aged visibly each year when we have had to deal with yet another asylum Bill. His help in Committee, however, will be as invaluable as ever. There were extremely interesting contributions from other Members as well.
	I think that, in one way or another, I have been involved in all three of the most recent major asylum Bills over the past few years. I believe that in Committee I have spoken on some 400 clauses, most of which seem to have been introduced as Government amendments on the last day of the Committee stage. That makes my point for me. Most of us regret the Government's insistence on more and more legislation, accompanied by less and less efficiency and proper enforcement of existing law. I directly accuse the Home Office of having been inefficient in many ways over the past seven or eight years, and I shall illustrate that shortly. I exempt from any criticism, however, not just the individual Ministers with whom I have dealt—the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality is no exception: he always shows great courtesy—but the private office, which is consistently helpful to Members who contact it.
	The tendency to legislate is becoming almost a disease in the Home Office. Why can it not focus much more on enforcing properly, and administering properly, the existing law that has been built up over a number of years? That tendency to over- legislate is illustrated by yet another Home Office Bill—the Violent Crime Reduction Bill, which appeared a week or two ago and which deals with crimes associated with alcohol and knives. The truth is that all these issues are amply covered by existing legislation, and more legislation is not needed.
	My general proposition is this. The Government should talk less but do more. They should not legislate so much. A smart headline is no real substitute for efficient action. Let me give an example of talk as opposed to action. The hon. Member for Walthamstow and others will recall the flagship asylum policy of 2002—the establishment of a number of accommodation centres in rural areas to house young asylum seekers. That was going to cure the problem. It was a major part of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. A huge amount of time was devoted to debate on the issue, and millions of pounds were spent on it. Perhaps the Minister will tell us just how many millions were spent. The Government thought that accommodation centres were the answer to all the problems, despite opposition to them. Can the Minister tell me how many of those centres are up and running today? The answer is: none. That great flagship policy has been quietly ditched. How much money has been spent on it? I simply do not know. I would like to find out, but I doubt whether the Minister will tell us.
	What about another issue—the removal of failed asylum seekers? Three or four years ago, the Government set out their target. They said, "We have a target and we are confident that we will meet it. We will be able to remove 30,000 failed asylum seekers a year from 2003 onward." What happened? They could not do it and that policy was abandoned. It collapsed.

Keith Vaz: The hon. Gentleman mentions Labour party policies. It was of course Conservative party policy that asylum applications be processed on an offshore island. Is that still party policy, or have we moved on?

Humfrey Malins: It is as though I am in a dream. Every time that I speak in an asylum debate, I spend five minutes paying huge compliments to the hon. Gentleman about his tremendous speech—[Interruption.] I am far too generous, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk) points out—only for the hon. Gentleman to make a not-very-kind intervention on me. I can answer him very well indeed. There is a major difference between our policy and the Labour party's policy, and it is simply this: we believe in controlled immigration. It appears to me, given what previous Home Secretaries have said, that Labour do not believe in immigration controls.

Keith Vaz: rose—

Humfrey Malins: I want to make progress; this is not just a debate between the hon. Member for Leicester, East and me.
	As for the policy of dealing with claims offshore—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) makes a sedentary intervention and it is very nice to see him join the debate—even at this late stage. We did see him earlier, briefly. It is indeed our policy that Parliament set a quota for the number of people settling here each year, and in due course, we would move toward a policy of region-of-origin applications, rather than applications through this House.

Keith Vaz: rose—

Humfrey Malins: In giving way briefly to the hon. Gentleman, I should point out that there is quite enough by way of Home Office failure in the past nine years to occupy us in a very lengthy debate. It is those failures to which I shall return shortly.

Keith Vaz: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way a second time. I just wanted first to thank him for his kind compliments; I did not wish to be rude or unkind to him. But given his strong feelings about this issue and his legal background, I cannot understand why he and his party are supporting a Bill that will remove the right of appeal in some cases. I find it extraordinary that they should support such a Bill.

Humfrey Malins: The hon. Gentleman does not find it extraordinary at all. I have known him long enough to realise that he is indulging in a bit of mischief. The truth is that there are parts of this Bill with which we agree, and by giving it a Second Reading we will be able to look at it carefully in Committee. Furthermore, a great deal will emerge during the summer that we will want to examine and debate in the autumn.
	I return for a moment to removals. The policy collapsed—the Government must accept that—but what is happening now? Including dependants, only 14,000 failed asylum seekers were removed in 2004–05, which is 21 per cent. fewer than in the previous year. Let me illustrate another of the Government's failures—sham marriages. The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 placed a duty on registrars to report to the Home Office those marriages that gave reasonable grounds for suspicion of a sham. What did the registrars do? They reported their suspicions in the thousands. What did the Home Office do on receipt of those reports? Virtually nothing. As one senior registrar told me, it was hardly worth reporting suspicions to the Home Office because the registrars well knew that nothing would be done following any such reports. There were many thousands of sham marriages over a five-year period, but how many prosecutions? It is another example of having legislation, but no action to follow it through.
	Let me give a little advice to Home Office Ministers about what they should do, and I shall try to be constructive. First, will the Government please ensure that those who take initial decisions in asylum and immigration cases are properly trained and thoroughly expert? The whole House believes that that is important. The quality of initial decision making still gives great cause for concern throughout the House and throughout the immigration world. When I tabled a parliamentary question on this matter a couple of years ago, I was astonished to find out how little training was given, even though for the individuals concerned the decisions are sometimes a matter of life and death. I was astonished not only at the lack of training, but at the very poor pay.
	What is needed is a driving up of the quality of initial decision making, which will greatly assist the immigration and asylum world, and then we must speed up the whole process. Delays, delays, delays: it is still not good enough that more than 6,000 asylum applications per year have to wait more than three months, even for an initial decision.
	I turn now to a question about initial decisions, which I asked the Home Secretary about five months ago. The answer was effectively that, as of last June, a total of 8,900 asylum cases had been awaiting an initial decision for more than six months. I do not believe that that is satisfactory. It is an unacceptable lack of efficiency by the Home Office, and emphasis must be placed on reducing that time.
	The Government should also be able to keep better track of the whereabouts of asylum seekers. Effective removals are impossible unless they do. I tabled a parliamentary question about that matter last month and the Home Office replied, stating that it was going to manage asylum seekers "much more closely" through "various means", including the use of "electronic monitoring". Will the Minister tell us tonight what those various means are and how many will be affected by electronic monitoring?
	While on the subject of returns, will the Minister tell us more about the success rate of the voluntary returns policy of failed asylum seekers? In particular, how much public money has been spent returning failed asylum seekers to the Czech Republic over the last few years—only to find, of course, that they are entitled to return here anyway?
	Let me conclude my criticism of the Government by saying that they need not only efficiency, but humanity. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary said earlier, one of the more unpleasant aspects of Government policy over the last few years has been ensuring that more and more final decisions are made by Home Office officials with less and less involvement of the courts. We saw that in the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Bill 2004, where the Government tried to oust the jurisdiction of the courts entirely. That was a very wrong thing to do. Many Labour Members in their places behind the Home Secretary tonight also believed that it was a wrong and horrible thing to do and it was through a combination of such Labour Members, Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members and the other place that the Government were persuaded to change their minds. Otherwise, the courts would not have been involved at all.
	I told the hon. Member for Leicester, East that we could support some aspects of the Bill. Clause 11 introduces the civil penalty for employing an adult subject to immigration control. We do not have a big problem with that in principle. Clause 17 introduces the criminal offence, but I wonder whether it is necessary. There is no lack of existing criminal law in that area. Surely it is already illegal under section 8 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 for an employer to hire a person subject to immigration control where that person lacks permission to work in the UK. If the 1996 Act was a good piece of legislation, why have not more prosecutions been brought under it? If it was bad, will the Minister say why the Government did not attend to it five or six years ago? Why have they waited until the ninth year of their term in office before looking at it?
	I am sure that the House would like a few more details about the factors that the Home Secretary will consider in determining the amount of the new civil penalty. The Bill states that an employer will be excused
	"if he shows that he complied with any prescribed requirements in relation to the employment."
	However, none of those prescribed requirements are set out in the Bill. I hope that the Minister will publish some of them over the summer.
	The Government have promised a so-called points system for immigrants. I want to make a plea on behalf of those who deal with work permits. Any reforms in this area should bring efficiencies, but they must not damage Britain's competitiveness. I hope that the Government accept that there is a clear distinction between people wishing to emigrate to the UK on a permanent or semi-permanent basis, and those whose companies need to transfer them here to work on specific, short-term projects. If we are to remain competitive, companies must be able to deploy international staff flexibly.
	Many hon. Members referred to clauses 1 to 5, which deal with appeals. These provisions are troubling. The clauses cut various rights of appeal, and some of the provisions could result in unfairness. Clause 1 takes away the right of appeal against an adverse decision in relation to varying leave to enter or remain. That may hit genuine students, who could also be hit by other elements of the Bill. There is a danger that taking away students' rights of appeal when initial decisions are often flawed will mean that the quality of those initial decisions will become even worse and more arbitrary. If an appeal cannot be mounted against a decision, the person making the decision will be less likely to concentrate hard on making sure that it is correct.
	Have the Government considered delaying the removal of the right of appeal until there has been a demonstrable improvement in decisions made by entry clearance officers? The arguments about the value of international students have been well deployed in the debate by several hon. Members, and I shall not go through them again. However, when the Bill is considered in Committee this autumn, I judge that there will be many amendments and speeches in support of the concept of the value that international students bring to this country.
	I conclude by saying that the tenor of debate has been friendly and constructive. Much information about the Bill will emerge over the next two or three months, and I urge the Home Secretary and his team to ensure that the House is kept fully informed about his plans. I also urge him not to submit 50 Government amendments suddenly, at the end of the deliberations in Standing Committee. A great failing in the past is that not enough time has been set aside to permit the Committee to debate matters properly. It is important that that does not happen with this Bill.
	Like the Government, we want the system to be humane and efficient. I promise the Minister that the Opposition will work hard over the rest of the year to be constructive and helpful in every respect.

Tony McNulty: I also think that the debate has been very good natured and good tempered, and that many contributions have been very well informed. That is not so true of some of them, but I shall return to that shortly.
	Two perspectives must be kept in mind. First, the backdrop: it is simply not good enough for people to talk constantly about chaos and crisis, and to besmirch—sometimes with a wide brush—every official at the Home Office or the immigration and nationality directorate. There is, and must be, room for a substantive and mature debate on asylum and managed migration, but that debate must reflect reality. I appreciate that we have not had a whole lot of the rather feeble Enoch Powell impressions that we had during the election, and that is good. However, the sub-text is important. We have had a 75 per cent. reduction in intake since the peak in October 2002. It has fallen back to 1997 levels.
	Several points need to be appreciated to colour a substantive debate on the issue. The initial decision backlog is the lowest it has been for a decade. More than 80 per cent. of new substantive applications on asylum get an initial decision within two months, except for one quarter in 2004, where it was 77 per cent., compared with an average of 22 months or more in 1997. From my own constituency experience, I can tell the House that the wait was substantially longer than that before 1997, but that is by the bye.
	United Kingdom figures for asylum applications fell by a greater proportion than in the rest of the EU—by 33 per cent. compared with a 17 per cent. average for the other member states. Airline liaison offices resulted in more than 33,000 inadequately documented passengers being denied boarding by the carriers in ALO locations in 2003. Let us have the debate, but let us have it in those terms.
	I listened with care to the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley). For some time, he has been making the substantive case about the merits or otherwise of economic migration. It is a valuable contribution to the debate and I do not think that he is opportunistic, racist or cranky. I do not necessarily agree with anything that he says, but I welcome his measured contribution to the debate.
	The facts on migration are available. It is not enough to say that we all accept that some migration is necessary or that refugees under the 1951 convention are acceptable, almost in passing, and then move on to knocking the system and saying that it is in chaos or crisis. I would say to the three new Conservative Members who contributed to the debate that such talk is what feeds those who would do us all down. As the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) said, we do need a fair, transparent and speedy system, but it is not enough to say that and then, in the next breath, legitimise the Nazis—as we are allowed to call them now, following a recent judgment—by saying that if we do not improve matters, we give them succour. That misses the point entirely.

Charles Walker: Will the Minister give way?

Tony McNulty: As I have named the hon. Gentleman, I will give way.

Charles Walker: Does the Minister accept that the BNP vote has trebled since 1997? Does not that concern him, as it concerns most other hon. Members?

Tony McNulty: That is the most fatuous point I have ever heard. The National Front's vote went through the roof in 1974 and had disappeared by 1979. Some of my colleagues would argue that that was because we had the most right-wing Tory Government ever and there was no need for the ultra-right. Then, all of a sudden, the vote bounced back in 1997. With the greatest respect, those are fatuous points. It annoys me that the BNP has any support anywhere.
	It should not be lost on the hon. Gentleman—I am sure that he and other parties do splendid work in Broxbourne against the BNP—that by talking constantly about chaos and crisis, he feeds BNP support not in those areas that already have rich, vibrant and diverse communities, but in neighbouring areas where it is easy for the BNP to say, on the back of the claims that legitimate politicians make about the system, that it is in chaos and crisis. That is exactly the entrée that the BNP needs. It is no accident that when that party first broke through in Burnley, it was not in the hard-core inner city areas but in the middle class white suburbs around the town—very similar to Broxbourne.
	Let us have a substantive debate, but let us have it in the context of where we are at. It should also be in more than a throwaway remark that we say that of course we accept genuine refugees and legal migration. Many specific points were made by hon. Members, and I shall dwell on some of them in the slightly longer than usual time that I have left.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz) was becoming agitated about the absence of the shadow Home Secretary. Whatever he is doing, he kindly told me that he would not be present, so he is not being discourteous.

Keith Vaz: rose—

Tony McNulty: I know that the shadow Home Secretary is at the reception that my hon. Friend has just come from, but that is by the bye. It was a courtesy for the right hon. Gentleman to tell me that he might not be back for the wind-up speeches; what he is doing is not my business at all, in oh so many ways—so many different ways.
	The right hon. Gentleman made some points about the existing legislation in relation to the introduction of civil penalties for illegal working. There are several reasons for what we have done. The section 8 legislation to prevent the use of illegal workers, introduced in 1997, before May, was flawed and provided a poor basis for launching prosecutions against employers. Last year, we took action to strengthen section 8 by reforming the system of document checks, and there were 10 convictions.
	Furthermore, I would say to those who ask why it has taken so long to do anything about section 8 that it is important to remember that there is other legislation under which cases have been brought, especially for facilitation. In 2002, there were 62 convictions for facilitation in magistrates courts and 147 in Crown courts. Some of those cases will have involved people who import and supply illegal workers. We can go into the matter in more detail in Committee, but we think that civil penalties will be a swifter and more effective way of tackling negligent employers. The new "knowingly" offence, with a custodial penalty, will be used to deal with those who deliberately use illegal workers but cannot be reached either by the law on facilitation or the original flawed law under section 8. I welcome any contributions to strengthen those provisions, because we need to go in that direction. We are not talking about bona fide employers who try their best to establish what is going on with their employees.
	If the debate is shifting away from where we are at with the asylum system—notwithstanding the point made about removals, to which I shall return—to a substantive debate about where we are at with managed migration, it must deal in substance with illegal working and the employer's role. That is an entirely fair point and we can explore it. Somebody said that that was all very well, but that in terms of managed migration there were only 12 individuals in the central team. I cannot remember who made that point, so I apologise to the hon. Member; I think that it may have been the Conservative Whip with whom I have the delight to serve on the Identity Cards Bill, the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Mr. Prisk). He is entirely right, but that is all we need at the centre. By the time the law is introduced, there will be about 1,200 warranted immigration officers with full rights to employ the fixed penalties. That is where we want our staff, out in the community dealing with such matters.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mark Fisher), who is no longer in the Chamber, made some fair points about massive dispersal and we have to deal with that, but I take issue with much of what he said about the substance of the Bill. I do not believe that the system in terms of either the Bill or the wider context of the five-year plan is, to quote him, too hostile to genuine refugees. Nor do I believe what he said about adjudication. The key point at the end of his speech, with which I entirely disagree, was that the Bill would do nothing to enhance Britain's reputation for providing a safe haven. As my hon. Friend is not in the Chamber I shall take that up with him at another time, but I do not agree with his point. The Bill must be seen firmly in the context of the five-year plan, as the Home Secretary said. Much of the plan can be achieved through immigration rule changes and secondary legislation, but much of what is in the Bill provides the building blocks for further secondary legislation and to tweak parts of the existing system.
	I did not catch much of the speech of the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) in the Chamber, but I heard it elsewhere. It is the second time today that one of his speeches has delighted me, because we were debating a Bill together this morning. It was a terribly—not terrible—measured and temperate contribution and I look forward to discussing some of those matters further with him. I shall come on to some of them later.
	One of the hon. Gentleman's specific points was that the Government had not yet made the case for using civil penalties against employers. That is a fair point and we can discuss it further in Committee. As I said, we believe that civil penalties can be an effective tool to encourage employers to adopt appropriate checks to prevent clandestine entry.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about a new inspection regime in terms of civil penalties. I can say that the immigration service will continue to carry out intelligence-led operational visits as now, and civil penalties do not presage a new inspection regime. The inspection service only works where it is intelligence that leads the problem.
	Clause 19 provides for the Government to issue a code of practice to employers on the avoidance of discrimination. Given that our deliberations will now be after the summer recess, I will try to ensure that at least the headline elements or framework of that code of practice—my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard) and others mentioned this—are available to the Committee during our deliberations. If an official falls over in the Box, that is because it is the first time that I have told them that.
	We need to discuss more fully some of the other points raised by the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland. He voiced concern that clause 1 does not give a right of appeal to people who have been granted protection for human rights reasons when the Home Office decides that their circumstances have changed and that it is now safe for them to return to their country of origin. Actually, the clause does provide a right of appeal to people who were previously recognised as refugees, against the decision that they no longer need protection, but we can explore that further in Committee. It contains an order-making power to extend that appeal right to other classes of people and it is our intention to use that power to extend the right to those granted humanitarian protection for human rights reasons. That sounds convoluted. It deals with the hon. Gentleman's point, but we can explore that in far more depth in Committee.
	I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East is resisting the urge to rebel, whether he is on his own in that rebellion or otherwise—if indeed he can manage to get a vote tonight. I fully concur with what people have said about his long, long record in this area, on an entirely cross-party and non-partisan basis. He is an expert, and he was very helpful to me in 1997 and during my first couple of years as an MP—and has been helpful since—when I was first dealing with a substantive community. As he rightly says, all the issues about family visitor appeals are outwith the Bill. They are not in substance part of the Bill. They will be among the elements that can be more readily discussed on immigration rule changes. My hon. Friend has already led a delegation, for want of a better word, of Labour Back Benchers to see me specifically on this issue. I told him when we went through the issues that I would be more than happy to reconvene that meeting and have another in September or October to let him know exactly where our thoughts were in terms of where to go with that rule change.

Humfrey Malins: rose—

Tony McNulty: People have raised significant issues in terms of papers only versus orals, the definition of family and other elements on which we would like to reflect. We will look at that in more detail and get back to the hon. Member for Woking (Mr. Malins). I am more than happy, if this answers his question, to extend the previously mentioned courtesy to the official Opposition and the minor—but sadly grown a bit—third party, if they want to avail themselves of it.

Humfrey Malins: Will the Minister tell the House what is happening to the accommodation centres, with particular reference to Bicester, and how much taxpayers' money has been pumped into that scheme? Will he also deal with the electronic tagging of asylum seekers?

Tony McNulty: With the greatest respect to the hon. Gentleman, I will answer in the way that I have got down in front of me rather than otherwise. If I do not get to it, I refer him to some extensive parliamentary questions, which were very well crafted, by his hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry) and answered in full some months ago, on all aspects including the costs. If he thinks that that intervention was a useful contribution to our deliberations and our way forward, that is a shame.
	Several Members have referred to measures being taken to improve the quality of initial decision making in entry clearance cases. Those were fair points in part, but we do not want to get lost in the premise that every ECO decision is by definition a bad decision. I understand that hon. Friends and other hon. Members say that to make their point in terms of rhetoric, but we do need to be quite steady on that. I will return to student visa appeals in a moment, but I am trying to elaborate on ECO decisions. With the fairest of winds, we are certainly six to nine months away from Royal Assent on the Bill. We are doing this now, so the university lobby's suggestion that we try to get enhanced developments to ECO decision making before the appeals are removed will almost follow in terms of our timing.

Keith Vaz: I thank my hon. Friend for what he has said so far about visitor appeals, but one way to help the system, if he is considering improving decision making, is to ensure that there is a person in UK Visas, whom Members of Parliament are able go to, who has the power to overturn or review decisions, so that we need not keep contacting the posts abroad if there is a problem.

Tony McNulty: Let me explore that point and come back to my hon. Friend. I am not sure whether that suggestion is appropriate; it may well end up being undermined as a sort of formalised second-guessing by every ECO in the world.

Alistair Carmichael: On the Home Office implementing changes now in ECO decision making and reviewing them before the Bill receives Royal Assent—if indeed, it ever does—will the Minister perhaps give an undertaking to the House that he will not bring those provisions into force unless the outcome of the changes that he will make to the ECO system indicate that there has been a substantial improvement in the quality of initial decision making?

Tony McNulty: Yes, I can, and to be honest, we would not be embarking on the roads on which I am about to elaborate unless we thought that substantive improvements would be made at the end of the process.
	An independent monitor is responsible for scrutinising refusals, including those that do not attract the right of appeal. That is not done in some sort of vacuum in the way that some hon. Members suggested. The independent monitor's role will be enhanced to become a full-time post that is more embedded—for want of another phrase—in the system. There will be greater training for ECOs and their supervising managers—that is under way as we speak—and greater resources will be engaged to allow entry clearance managers more time to review decisions and to enable the recruitment of the network of regional managers. The points system will equally provide clearer and more transparent criteria.
	So the irony is, in part, that a small amount—barely 2 per cent.—of all refusals for student visas go to appeal and are then successful. In relative terms, the amount of time and effort taken by UK Visas and the ECOs to process those cases is enormously inflated. If we get rid of that appeal layer and implement all the improvements to ECO decision making that I am talking about, both elements will ensure that more resources can be devoted to the front end of the operation, rather than otherwise. Again, we can talk about that specific appeals element, which is in the Bill, in Committee.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow makes the case, I suspect, for serving on yet another Committee considering a Bill on immigration, asylum and nationality, but that is a matter for the Whips, not for me. I would hate to destroy his record, given that he is running so well and has served on all those Committees since 1992. Again, he makes a fair point about the five years for refugees. If we go down that route, it is incumbent on us to ensure that people do not wait five, eight, 10 or 12 years to get to the stage where they are declared as refugees in the first place. That is the Government's starting point, and that is what we are trying to do.
	We are trying to implement those changes for two key reasons. First, we want to establish across the board the principle that people must reside in this country for five years before they can become eligible for settlement. That is not new; it is more or less the system that was in place beforehand.

Neil Gerrard: May I put it to my hon. Friend that the provision that refugees were given indefinite leave at the same time as they were granted refugee status is something that we introduced? I have still not heard any reason to reverse that policy. What is the reason for reversing it?

Tony McNulty: That is, at least in part, what I was going to start to elaborate on today, but I am sure that we will discuss it more over the summer and subsequently in Committee.
	More generally, we are making changes to increase the economic benefits to the UK of permanent settlement and to introduce requirements closer to the rights and obligations of full citizenship.
	Secondly, we are applying the principle that the UK should offer people protection and refuge for as long as they need it, but if conditions in their home countries change and it is safe for them to go back, we would expect them to do so. The Geneva convention says that it shall cease to apply to someone who
	"can no longer, because the circumstances in connection with which he has been recognised as a refugee have ceased to exist, continue to refuse to avail himself of the protection of the country of his nationality."
	The measure is thus within the spirit of the 1951 convention, but we can discuss that in full another time.
	My hon. Friend was right to say that we should look for a range of measures and actions to tackle people who use illegal workers beyond what is in the Bill and the five-year strategy. I totally agree, and that was why we supported the Gangmasters (Licensing) Act 2004. We are developing joint working with other workplace enforcement bodies, such as the Health and Safety Commission, the Department for Work and Pensions, the national minimum wage inspectorate and others. That work includes establishing a joint pilot scheme in the midlands to examine such matters in more detail. We are working closely with employers, unions and others to examine the whole issue of illegal working, as it is right and proper to do.
	My hon. Friend said that a wide power was being sought to define the grounds on which entry clearance appeals could be brought, but that power already exists under the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004. He made an important point, as did the hon. Member for North-East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), among others, about the oversight extended to all detention centres. As my hon. Friend knows, Her Majesty's chief inspector of prisons already has statutory oversight over longer-term immigration detention facilities, as well as exercising oversight over short-term holding facilities and escort services, although that is currently done only by invitation. The Bill will put all immigration detention facilities on the same statutory footing, so I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that he wants.
	I did not accept the Liberal Democrat point that removing appeal rights for students would drive them to our international competitors because the countries with which we are competing for the brightest and best international students, such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, do not offer appeals against the refusal of student visas in the first place. I do not want to underestimate the difficulties of the university sector in attracting foreign students. There is a combination of factors behind that such as the strength of the pound and the fact that our competitors are getting far better and thus catching up with us. All those matters need to be put into the mix, but a £50 increase in visa fees for students who spend between £20,000 and £30,000 over three years would not represent such a problem. I cannot emphasise enough that no aspect of the measure runs counter to everything that we say about the contribution that overseas students make throughout the university sector. We set up a joint working group with the education sector to examine in detail how we can work together to ensure that that continues to happen.
	The hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr. Cable) made a perfectly fine and temperate speech, but he got sidelined by talking about some 50 tests that employers must carry out. That is for the birds—it is simply not the case at all.
	I am hopeful—perhaps naively—that following the disgraceful emphasis that the official Opposition put on these matters and the way in which they did so, they now have a sort of collective corporate hangover and perhaps a little bit of shame. We have a window in which we can have a reasoned and mature cross-party debate about what we want from our asylum and managed migration systems and the overall contribution that both elements can make to the vibrancy of our country in the 21st century. We need to say all the time that immigrants make a substantial contribution to this country—and not simply in economic terms. We will always cherish both our responsibilities and our record on being party to the 1951 convention and our treatment of refugees.
	If the Bill, if nothing else, augers the start of that mature debate not only in the Chamber and across the parties, but in our media as well—that might be hoping for too much—it will have served its purpose. Perversely, the nasty ultra-right-wing excesses of the Conservative party might then also have served their purpose. I commend the Bill to the House.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Bill accordingly read a Second time.

IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM AND NATIONALITY BILL (PROGRAMME)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A(6) (Programme motions):
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill:
	Committal
	1. The Bill shall be committed to a Standing Committee.
	Proceedings in Standing Committee
	2. Proceedings in the Standing Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 25th October 2005.
	3. The Standing Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
	Consideration and Third Reading
	4. Proceedings on consideration shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced.
	5. Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
	6. Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on consideration and Third Reading.
	Other proceedings
	7. Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further message from the Lords) may be programmed.—[Mr. Dhanda.]
	The House divided: Ayes 285, Noes 65.

Question accordingly agreed to.

IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM AND NATIONALITY BILL [MONEY]

Queen's recommendation having been signified—
	Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a) (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with bills),
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—
	(1) expenditure of the Secretary of State in connection with the Act, and
	(2) any increase attributable to the Act in sums payable out of money provided by Parliament under another enactment.—[Mr. Dhanda.]
	Question agreed to.

IMMIGRATION, ASYLUM AND NATIONALITY BILL [WAYS AND MEANS]

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 52(1)(a) (Money resolutions and ways and means resolutions in connection with bills),
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill, it is expedient to authorise—
	(1) the charging of fees in connection with immigration and nationality applications, claims, services, processes, advice and information, and
	(2) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund. — [Mr. Dhanda.]
	Question agreed to.

G8&NBSP;MEETING

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.— [Mr. Dhanda.]

George Galloway: It has been some time since I caught your eye, Mr. Speaker, so I am extremely grateful to the mystery hand that guides the lottery that chooses the subject for the Adjournment debate. To be successful on this subject the night before the G8 convenes in Gleneagles is exceedingly good fortune.
	On the subject of mystery hands, I should welcome my erstwhile hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), who is now a Foreign Office Minister, to his post. I good-naturedly remind him that while he now has access to my MI6 file, remembering him well as I do from our days on the barricades together, I have access to his file from King street, Covent Garden. [Interruption.] The Minister affects not to know who was headquartered in King street, Covent Garden, but I think some of us in the House know the answer to that very well.
	It is equally well known that I have a low opinion of this Government. But even I never imagined that they would try to execute a cynical U-turn in their international reputation on the sea of bodies laid out every three seconds as a result of poverty in the world such as that which we have been witnessing these last few weeks. Browno and Blairof, or Blairo and Brownof, or however else this self-styled Lennon and McCartney like to see themselves, have, however, been rumbled—not only by the quarter of a million British people who marched in Edinburgh at the weekend but even, now, by the leadership of Make Poverty History, whom the Government imagined they had in their pocket. Quoted in The Guardian this morning, Steve Tibbett of ActionAid said this:
	"It is shocking that the government is using millions of poor people to score a PR coup."
	I do not know where Mr. Tibbett has been living, but it is not shocking with this Government. "Look behind the rhetoric", he said,
	"and the reality falls far short. We are still nowhere near a deal that will effectively tackle global poverty. So far the UK government is largely serving up spin and hype."
	The Government are engaged in a carefully calculated deception of public opinion to try to draw a veil over the disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and to scramble up at least the foothills of the moral high ground on the greatest issue facing the world today. More than half the world's population lives on half the money it costs to keep a cow in the Elysian fields of the European Union.
	This has been deliberately reduced by new Labour to a question of heavily conditional debt cancellation for some countries in one continent. The conditions allowing a takeover of their countries' economies by the International Monetary Fund, Paul Wolfowitz's World Bank, and the vulture capitalists and robber barons of the globalised corporations will leave the people thus relieved even worse off than they were to start with. Seventy-seven per cent. of the people living on less than $2 a day in the 1990s lived in countries being strangled by free-market structural reforms implemented by exactly that unholy trinity.
	One in six in the world has no access to clean water, and four die every minute from drinking it dirty. The neo-liberal axis believes in privatisation as a purifier, hence the fiasco of the British Government's attempt to pour free-market water down the throats of the poor in Tanzania—a scheme recently sunk in derision at the considerable expense of the British taxpayer.
	Every day, more than 6,000 people die from AIDS in Africa alone, largely unable to access readily available medication. One hundred million children have no school to go to and 30,000 die every day from diseases that kill next to no children in the rich world. Everything the neo-liberal consensus proposes for Africa has already been tried in Latin America, where it failed utterly. Presumably that is why that region has not had a look-in in recent Government discourse.
	One in five Latin Americans live in extreme poverty while more than 40 per cent. are characterised as poor. That is one reason why, from Bolivia to Brazil, from Cuba to Caracas, a radical challenge is being mounted now on the streets to the prescriptions that the Government propose to dole out to the people of Africa.
	Just as one cannot get slim through eating low-fat chocolate when it is not part of a calorie-controlled diet, one cannot make poverty history through conditional, highly selective debt cancellation without a profound change in the distribution of wealth and power in the world. Such a shift is impossible to imagine at Gleneagles. That is why I shall be marching there tomorrow, with thousands of others, making it clear that we will not make poverty history until we make the G8 and its system history.
	Let us be clear: the poor people in the poor countries do not owe the rich in the rich countries anything. In so far as they are in debt, it was not incurred by them but by overwhelmingly unelected dictatorships of one kind or another, usually backed in the cold war days by the west. The money was often spent on self-aggrandisement and western weapons. In any case, those original loans were long ago repaid, but for the usury of the hyper-interest charged by western lenders to bloat their £1 billion-a-year-plus profits. Poor countries would be entirely justified in tearing up their debt repayment books and declaring, "We have already paid", and they might well add, "Far from us owing you money, you owe us."
	When the British empire, on which the sun never set because God would not trust us in the dark, arrived in the area then known as Bengal, it was one of the richest places in the world. When we left, it was one of the poorest. One does not have to be Einstein to work out what happened in between. The poor countries are poor because the rich countries became rich partly by making and keeping them poor. The great empires took away everything they could carry, including, in the case of Africa, the people themselves, whom we chained in the holds of ships and carried off as slaves. Until a seismic shift of wealth is made in reparation towards the people we robbed, justice will not be done.
	Yet huge wealth remains in the poor countries and in the effort and skills of their people. However, the economic system over which the G8 presides continues to loot and plunder, as alliances such as the Jubilee South coalition of debt campaigns and social movements from 40 countries throughout the poor world have made clear.
	Let us consider unfair trade and fuelling wars in and across colonial boundaries. Why are the British Government giving Uganda and Rwanda blue-eyed-boy status when both are involved in the invasion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, thus further beggaring a country first pushed down a long slope to misery by the colonialist conspiracy against and the murder of the greatest of all African leaders—Patrice Lumumba—and by his hand-picked replacement Mobutu, who went on to become the greatest thief of the 20th century?
	All aid is made conditional on unfair trade—the erection of tariff barriers to poor country imports while demanding the destruction of any protection for their industries. As President Bush said:
	"We're not interested in supporting any Government that doesn't have open economies and open markets".
	Despite all that, Government mendacity has relentlessly maintained—in some cases flatly falsely, for example the Chancellor's repeated statements that he proposes 100 per cent. debt write-off for the poorest countries—that their proposals, if only they can persuade back-sliding Johnny foreigners, will make poverty history.
	In the words of Richard Bennett, chairman of Make Poverty History, when expressing his "dismay and serious concern" at the way in which Britain was presenting proposals for debt cancellation:
	"What is being discussed is emphatically not 100 per cent. debt cancellation for the world's poorest countries, but Government spokespeople continue to state and imply that it is".
	A small minority of the world's poorest countries will have significant debt cancellation if this deal is agreed. In the words of Ivy Maina from Kenya, who has travelled from ActionAid's Johannesburg office by bus:
	"Africa is counting on this summit to deliver. I was face to face with Gordon Brown, and nothing he said will reassure the millions of people relying on his government and other G8 leaders. I fear that if there are no further developments over the week, all I will have to take home from Scotland is bleak news."
	In place of the annual $125 billion in new money demanded by Make Poverty History if the G8 countries are to meet the UN aid target of 0.7 per cent. of gross national income, the G8 are offering just $25 billion for Africa, much of which is money that has already been pledged. In place of the $45 billion that would be released by 100 per cent. cancellation of the poorest countries' debts, the G8 are offering just over $1 billion in cancelled debt service payments—a fraction of what is required.
	War on Want, the World Development Movement, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, People & Planet and many other organisations are now mounting a massive critique of the mendacity to which I have referred. It would simply be impossible to imagine that the story being told—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I want to try to help the hon. Gentleman as best I can, but he is using the term "mendacity", which in my book means lying. I would hope that he is not linking that with any right hon. or hon. Member of this House.

George Galloway: Is it permissible to describe the Government as mendacious, rather than any specific Minister, which is what I was doing?

Mr. Speaker: We can let the hon. Gentleman get away with saying that about the Government, but not about any individual.

George Galloway: I think I will quit while I am ahead on that one, Mr. Speaker, now that we have entered that judgment into the parliamentary lexicon.
	It is impossible to recognise the Government's story in the story being told by the campaigning organisations on the ground and by most of those concerned. For me, they are not the Lennon and McCartney of world development issues; they are the Status Quo. And it is a mangy status quo, which will do nothing to resolve the ocean of misery and poverty that exists in the world. They are the Motley Crue—for the younger Members of the House—not the Lennon and McCartney, and the people are beginning to see through them.

Kim Howells: I congratulate the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Galloway) on securing this debate. As he has told us, the G8 summit will begin at Gleneagles tomorrow, and it would be wrong of me to pre-empt what decisions will be reached there. They will be reached as a consequence of discussion and, I hope, very civilised debate, rather than on the basis of name calling or of the kind of paranoia that we have just heard.
	I shall try to explain to the hon. Gentleman why the Government have decided on the agenda for the summit. That is all that I can do—I cannot possibly match that degree of paranoia. I have not heard a speech like that for about 30 years, although I did read quite a chunk of it the other day in a Trotskyist journal for which the hon. Gentleman wrote. I was particularly taken by the line:
	"You can't get slim by eating low-fat chocolate. It has to be part of a calorie-controlled diet. You can't make poverty history by writing off some of the debt of some of the countries in Africa and pretending you've made up for centuries of exploitation and injustice."
	Well, I have just heard that here, too.
	All of us in the House agree that we must work with the material that we have. I know that the hon. Gentleman understood that at one time, but I am not sure that he understands it now. We must try to make progress. He has not mentioned one of the other great themes of the conference, climate change, as though that will not affect poor Africans or south Americans or poor people in Europe or Asia in the same way that it will affect the wealthy—but it will. He has picked his subject and it is his Adjournment debate, so I do not blame him for that. However, it has cast a shadow over the self-righteous paranoia that I have just heard.
	Our G8 agenda is deliberately ambitious. The Government believe that future generations would not understand if we failed to take this opportunity for progress. That is what we intend to do at Gleneagles and beyond. No one in the G8 disputes that Africa and climate change should be priorities; everyone believes that they are and should be. The G8 is involved in real, detailed negotiations, which are not a sham. We are making some progress. There is real support for action, but negotiations are tough and they will go to the wire. We hope that we will fulfil our ambitions. We still have some way to go and I would not expect us to achieve our whole agenda at this stage of the negotiations. There are likely to be more intense discussions ahead. The Government are determined, however, and we will not give up.
	Africa is the only continent where poverty is increasing—that is not to deny what the hon. Gentleman said accurately about south America and other countries where there is great poverty, which must also be tackled. It is also true, however, that we have seen progress in Africa. Despite some appalling exceptions, there is more democracy and peace in Africa than ever before. Some of Africa's new leaders are determined to change the way in which their countries operate and they have grasped the fact that 2005 offers fresh opportunities for Africa to create for itself sustainable economic growth that has the potential to benefit the population in general and not just the powerful few.
	I appreciate very much the hon. Gentleman's condemnation of the gangsters who have run many African states—he knows that I, too, regard them as gangsters, but many of them are still there. They have come not only from the right but from the left—they were not just American puppets but Soviet puppets.

George Galloway: Name them.

Kim Howells: The hon. Gentleman speaks from a sedentary position. For a start, I would name Robert Mugabe, but there have been others. I remember the Angolan and the Mozambique civil wars. There were young men who started out in Geneva being nurtured by the UN who were picked and taken up by the Americans and the Soviets, and who ended up inspiring whole nations to fight each other in pointless wars—the cold war fought by proxy. I will not hear that it has come from just one political direction—

George Galloway: rose—

Kim Howells: I have a few minutes to go. The great problem with the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond), who is commenting from a sedentary position, is sitting next to the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow because he uses every opportunity to get his mug on television. He will not divert me this evening from justifying something that is very important.
	Africa is the only continent where poverty is increasing, but we can make progress. We should not be diverted by attempts to create a spurious history that excuses what has gone on in Africa and what goes on in Africa now. We must make progress. The hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow wants, I assume, to see some kind of world revolution that will sweep away the dictators of Africa as it sweeps away capitalism in general. I heard that message as I sat listening to him. That is fair enough. If it is what the hon. Gentleman believes, he is entitled to believe it. However, we are arguing for the comprehensive package of achievable targets outlined in the Commission for Africa report, which means significant additional resources through an agreement on multilateral debt, aid, trade and investment. No doubt that is prosaic stuff to the hon. Gentleman. It is not a glamorous soundbite, but it might just help people in Africa—ordinary people in Africa—to create a better society, a better economy and a better future for themselves. That is not what the hon. Gentleman wants to hear, of course, but it might just be what people in Africa want to hear, rather than great calls for world revolution.
	As I have said, the package outlined in the report means significant additional resources through an agreement on multilateral debt, aid, trade and investment. All that, however, is predicated on our belief that the new resources must be linked to African Governments securing improvements in governance and capacity, resolving conflict and overcoming corruption. Although the package requires a big increase in resources, it is not just about funds. It is about achieving significant gains in health, education, governance, capacity to trade in global markets—because that is the world in which we live—programmes to deal with killer diseases and, of course, peacekeeping capacity. In other words, it is about having strong partnerships with African Governments and securing commitment and support for capacity-building programmes. In the context of trade, it is not just about reducing tariffs. As the Commission for Africa recommended, we need to look at constraints on the supply side, such as the problems of poor governance and the lack of infrastructure that make it so difficult for African goods to reach world markets. More resources are needed to help African countries to develop that infrastructure and to develop higher education and science and technology capacity.
	Our focus on Africa is already having an impact. We have secured agreement from G7 Finance Ministers on 100 per cent. multilateral debt relief, specific agreements to increase aid levels—including the doubling of aid from the European Union—and agreement on the need to set a timetable for elimination of trade-distorting export support in agriculture. That, I think, is real progress, but we need to push the agenda harder, and that is why the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development, along with other Ministers, have been working so energetically to ensure that progress is made.
	We identified 2005 as a key year for Africa with our two presidencies, the United Nations millennium summit and the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Hong Kong. We shall look very carefully at how we have done at the end of the year. However, a comprehensive agreement at Gleneagles is critical to progress in New York and Hong Kong and it can send a strong signal to the rest of the international community. That is absolutely vital.
	As I said, the hon. Gentleman failed to mention the other great theme that the Government are pushing both in the G8 and in our presidency of the EU. Harmful change to our climate is a real threat and there seems little doubt that reducing that effect is one of the most important issues that we face in the long term. We need the growth in greenhouse gas emissions to slow, decline and stop if we are to achieve a secure and sustainable future. The hon. Gentleman and I probably do not agree about a great deal these days, but I will say this to him. Every dream that he has about improving the lot of poor people, wherever they are in the world, will come to nothing if our economies become disastrous failures as a consequence of our inability to tackle this issue. To try to pretend otherwise is foolish in the extreme.
	We know that tackling the issue will not be easy because we know that the world's energy requirements will increase by 60 per cent. over the next 25 years. That largely reflects development needs in the poorest countries. The hon. Gentleman spoke of the scandal that South America is not involved. He might have talked about China or India, whose economies are expanding at a huge rate—but as they expand, there is a great hunger for energy and for electricity. Lenin, one of the hon. Gentleman's great heroes, knew that that is a prime need of people. How can they have a modern society without such things? But of course, we somehow have to generate that electricity. We have to offer people the same wealth, riches and aspirations that we have enjoyed for so long. What will happen if we do not find other ways of ensuring that such activities do not pollute our world even more? Well, the hon. Gentleman does not seem to be at all concerned about that—and if he is, he might have mentioned it.
	We have no choice but to satisfy the demand for progress in the developing world, but we must do so at a lower environmental cost. The decisions that consumers and businesses are taking today, right across the world, have significant implications for greenhouse gas emissions for years and decades to come. I hope that the hon. Gentleman understands that point and that he will join me and the great majority in this House in wanting to do something about it.
	There is no question that we have yet to reach agreement on how to meet that challenge. There are many opinions on this issue throughout the world. I have always been very sceptical about just how big a part human beings play, but Gleneagles provides an opportunity to debate the issue thoroughly. We will not do that by sloganising or by using the easy political soundbites that we just heard as a substitute for a proper argument. No, we will not do that because it does not involve thought or debate. What it signifies is a life built on slogans.
	It is a great shame that the hon. Gentleman has stopped thinking about these issues in anything other than soundbites and clichés. It is a shame that he regards those who are gathered at Gleneagles in an attempt to find a way out of this situation—as evidenced in his article in the Trot journal, to which I referred earlier—as the most dangerous men in the world. Of course, he does not mention the despots and tyrants with whom he has long had a very dubious relationship, and I do not blame him for that. Right from the beginning, he has loved a little besmirching of character. Of course, the last thing that he wants is for that to happen to him.
	I hope that the hon. Gentleman will have a little think about this issue and ask, "Can we move forward from here? Can we make a difference to the lives of people in Africa and the rest of the world by using the existing machinery?" We could use the WTO, for example, and in that regard he could argue for whichever element he wants. We need to consider how we can allow farmers in Africa to sell their goods more easily in the wealthy west—in the northern hemisphere. There are ways of doing that, but of course he does not want that. The great old Trotskyist argument is, "Let's have another capitalist crisis. That way, people will see the error of their ways and they will rise up and sweep away these pernicious capitalist Governments." I have heard that argument so very often, and what has it brought the people of the world? It has brought them war and poverty, not wealth or the security of knowing that their kids will be able to drink the clean water about which the hon. Gentleman spoke.
	We have got to work with what we have got. Although this is by no means a perfect opportunity and it has its faults, we have an opportunity to make some progress. We ought to take it.
	Question put and agreed to.
	Adjourned accordingly at twenty-six minutes to Eleven o'clock.